


Son of Sarek

by JennaSinclair



Series: Sharing the Sunlight (STS) [8]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 05:29:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 47,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12052308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaSinclair/pseuds/JennaSinclair
Summary: The Enterprise visits a planet where Kirk, Spock, and McCoy will witness a maturation ceremony for a community's youth.  The ceremony brings up many memories for Spock, and impacts his relationship with Kirk...and McCoy.





	Son of Sarek

**Author's Note:**

> "Son of Sarek" is the eighth entry in my Sharing the Sunlight series. Each work was written so that a reader could catch up with what is going on if they haven’t read the previous stories, but of course you’ll get a bit more if you read the series in order. I use the name Jenna Sinclair for this K/S series. I use Jenna Hilary Sinclair for all other fanfiction and my professional work.
> 
> Here's the series in chronological order:
> 
> 1\. Sharing the Sunlight (novel)  
> 2\. Reflections on a Lunar Landscape  
> 3\. Pursuing Hyacinths (novella)  
> 4\. Heart’s Delight (novella)  
> 5\. Primal Scream  
> 6\. Parallel Courses  
> 7\. Double Trouble  
> 8\. Son of Sarek (novella)  
> 9\. Promises to Keep (novel)  
> 10\. Jagged Edges  
> 11\. Manna  
> 12\. Journey’s End  
> 13\. One Night  
> 14\. In the Shade (novel)
> 
> All stories and novels in the Sharing the Sunlight series will be posted to Archive of Our Own.

_There was dust in the upper reaches of the red sky. It obscured the light from Eridani and its distant, barely visible stellar companion. The dust obscured the reflected glow from T’Khut the sister, so that the objects on the desert lost their usual clearly-defined, sharp edges. There were no shadows._

_The rock formation towering over them looked unreal; flat grey and brown, with no trace of the shimmering pinks and oranges that usually crowned its jagged summit in the dawning of another brilliant day. The sand, undulating in long folds to the horizon, was grey, lifeless and uninteresting. Even the wind was poised, holding its breath, and did not swirl particles along the desert floor as it usually did._

_Were the forces of nature itself transformed on this day? Spock wondered. He felt a dryness in his throat and told himself it was thirst. He felt very small._

_The boy standing next to him moved, releasing Spock from the rigid immobility he had imposed upon himself. Although he and the other six-year-old boys were merely observers, not participants, standards of behavior must be maintained. Spock copied the boy’s actions, allowing himself only the one gesture. He pushed back the hood of his desert robe and gazed up into the sky, being careful to keep his eyes away from the obscured brilliance of Eridani even in this strange dimness._

_Sarek had been most clear in his instructions on the dangers to the eye from looking directly at the suns. It was one of the first lessons Spock could remember, made even more important because the planet’s first Vulcan/Human hybrid had been born with a tightly curled flap instead of a fully developed inner eyelid._

_Six-year-old Spock remembered the trip he and his parents had taken to the medical center in the heart of Shikahr three years before. The healers were to examine his eyes and determine whether the flap had unfolded as hoped. The crisp, antiseptic smell of the hospital was not new to Spock; he had encountered it many times already in his young life. Nor was he unused to the curiosity of the attending physicians, who were always eager to examine his hybrid body. Some seemed to delight in discovering every difference from the Vulcan norm. Even at age three, he realized that._

_What was new was his ability to perceive his mother’s barely contained anxiety as she motioned him to climb upon the examining table, as she instructed him to remain still. Spock remembered the dry hands of the healer, but he remembered far more vividly Amanda’s puzzling emotional state, perceived for the first time through his just developing telepathic senses._

_He had watched her close her eyes during the examination, sensed her intense relief when the healer announced that the flap had indeed developed into a structure that could protect him. And there had been something more that flared into life at that moment, sizzling between them as Amanda opened her eyes and smiled down at her only son._

_It had disoriented him, this power he sensed. It frightened him to be a part of something he did not understand, to feel this unleashed force focused upon him with his mother’s eyes. What did it mean? Three years of experience on Vulcan did not provide any answer for the little boy suddenly frightened of his own mother._

_Not understanding completely why, Spock shrank back from her. It was almost as though there were a conflagration within her, and he was afraid of being caught in the flames._

_Then he watched as Amanda folded her arms within her robe, took the deep breath that was the prelude to rudimentary Vulcan disciplines. The fire was dampened from within, as if it had never been._

_Spock did not know what he had witnessed. The emotional emanations he perceived were so confusing. He felt dizzy and disoriented._

_He swayed as he stood up from the examining table. The healer was forced to touch his elbow; Amanda had encircled his back with her protecting arm. Sarek had stood apart and watched him, eyes hooded, and as always Spock was aware of his scrutiny. Spock straightened, the physical contact ceased, and Sarek turned towards the door._

_But even with the inner eyelid that all Vulcans, and even Spock possessed, staring at Eridani was dangerous. Here on the desert during this somber day Spock would diligently follow the instructions of his father. He would not disgrace Sarek. He was most grateful for the teaching. He kept his eyes forty-five degrees to the right of Vulcan’s primary star._

_Now the boy next to him turned to look at Spock. For a moment Spock thought that Shil would speak and violate the silence imposed upon them from the beginnings of the ceremony. But no, the boy merely thinned his lips into a sneer Spock had seen many times before and gestured forward with an expressive finger. Spock could not help himself, he bit his lower lip in reaction, bit again as he realized Shil had noticed the blatant emotionalism. He blinked once, carefully and in control as Sarek had trained him to do, and felt a small sense of triumph as the hand within the folds of his robe did not curve into a fist. He forced himself to look in the direction that Shil had indicated._

_The candidates were emerging from behind the pile of rocks._

_Striding smoothly with the other boys was Sreer. He was sixth in line behind the elder who led them. He wore the traditional loose-fitting shirt and trousers, bereft of adornment. The adornment would come later, after the triumph, during the family gathering that would follow. It was inevitable. Proudly Sreer would wear his household’s Ilk’kroyanim about his neck and the heavy N’iti on his finger. Spock imagined how Sreer’s uncles and aunts would extend crossed hands to him in acknowledgment of his achievement. Older cousins would converse with him as an equal for the first time; younger ones, still uncontrolled, would look at Sreer with envy. Spock was sure of it._

_As he walked with a measured pace, Sreer’s eyes were trained intently forward, the expression on his face was determined. He did not look in Spock’s direction. Spock did not expect him to. Sreer was to be admired; Sreer followed the pathways of Tradition effortlessly. It was why he would be so easily victorious. He had already conquered himself. Nature would bow down to him._

_In one year, it would be Spock who walked behind the elder, Spock who would undertake the rigors of the Kahs-wan, Spock who would emerge triumphant and transformed. But in this year Sreer was the one who would make the journey into maturity._

_Together with the other candidates Sreer followed the instructions of the elder and approached the designated location for the beginning of the ceremony._

_Spock wished that he had not discarded the obscuring folds of the hood about his face. He attempted to school his expression into the proper lines, but he was unsure that he was succeeding. Were the envy and the regret that constricted his breathing visible for all to see?_

_Guiltily, Spock risked a glance in Sarek’s direction, but he could not see his father among the group of parents standing some ten meters away. His eyes slid over the figure of Amanda. She always stood out in a gathering of Vulcans, for the other women were invariably tall and willowy, graceful, the physical trademarks of Sarek’s clan. Spock’s mother was short, and to his condemning eyes, plump. Fortunately, he had not inherited Amanda’s fair coloring._

_His eyes passed over his mother, then settled on the woman standing next to her, Sreer’s mother T’Sora. Spock recognized the dress she was wearing. It was the color of the desert birds that flew high above them, a deep, rich brown. She had worn it twenty-seven days ago, the time she had assisted him and Sreer with problem number fourteen in their linear algebra assignment. T’Sora was an accomplished mathematician._

_Sreer now took his place before the elder. Skrok positioned his fingers on the boy’s face for the ceremonial mind touch. What did the elder see?_

_Would the image of that first day be on the surface of Sreer’s mind, the day that had opened the door of friendship for Spock? Would the elder see Spock struggling with a heavy sack of terwitum grain at the provisioning center and hear Sreer’s mother’s low-voiced command to her son to assist him? Would he see the day Spock had been invited to Sreer’s house to share study-time, the first time ever for Spock, perhaps the hundredth for the popular and perfect Sreer? Would he see Spock’s awkward entry, and the eminently logical way that Sreer’s inestimable mother had attempted to make him comfortable in her home?_

_Spock did not know. He swallowed, and then used one of Sarek’s phrases for comfort. “Drawing conclusions with no data is illogical.” He had no data on the content of Sreer’s mind. It was illogical to speculate._

_Skork’s hands fell to his side, his ceremonial meld with Sreer was over. He moved on to the next boy. As was proper; Sreer remained in his place, face expressionless, eyes trained forward. Sreer was to be greatly admired._

_Spock blinked once, twice, then again. He trained his vision on the smudged curve of T’Khut just visible on the horizon; its image was blurred by the atmospheric conditions._

_It did not matter what the elder saw, Spock told himself. After this day, his friendship with Sreer would have no meaning. Sreer would pass the Kahs-wan, perfectly, and he would enter the world of maturity. His steps would be firmly on the pathways of Tradition. There would be no contact between them until Spock also moved beyond his childhood and chose the way of logic and control._

_There would be no more shared study time. For another year, Spock would retreat to his father’s home, and share his hours with Amanda: Amanda with the lights in her eyes that burned, that Spock did not understand._

_The dust high up in the sky was filtering down into the lower atmosphere. A new wind picked up the sand from the desert floor and swirled it around. The light grew even dimmer, and though it was early in the day, it seemed more like twilight. The conditions would make the completion of the Kahs-wan difficult, but Spock felt confident that the elders would not allow the ceremony to continue if there were excessive danger. And Sreer would be able to finish the journey to maturity no matter what the environmental circumstances. He would triumph even in the midst of a sandstorm._

_Confidently, Spock trained his sight on his... friend. Logic dictated that he not regret the temporary occlusion of their friendship. It was right. It was appropriate. It was logical._

_The wind blew harder. Skrok raised his hand to send the boys across the desert. In his heart, six-year-old Spock said good-bye._

CHAPTER ONE

“I don’t care what the sociologists say, nothing will convince me that it’s right!”

“But cultures evolve in many different forms, Doctor McCoy. The Prime Directive....”

“Blast the Prime Directive! It doesn’t exactly apply here and you know it. Besides, I’m tired of hearing Starfleet regulations quoted when lives might be at stake!” McCoy juggled his meal tray over to balance on one hand, then pointed a finger in Spock’s face. “I can understand ritual and tradition, yes, I’m not an idiot. I understand their value for any culture. But I don’t want to have to witness some outdated ceremony where people can easily be killed, like we’ve been invited to see on Shercata! And not even just people, but children!” Indignation rang out in McCoy’s voice.

Spock compressed his lips, and reached into the servo slot as his evening meal of chittwithering greens, broccoli, and pasty white cubes appeared. “I fail to understand,” he said tightly, “why you should place a greater intrinsic worth upon the life of a child than upon that of an adult. You humans allow excessive sentiment to cloud your judgment. You are most illogical in that regard.”

McCoy rolled his eyes as he led the way to the table where the senior officers of the _Enterprise_ most often sat for dinner. The deck five rec room was crowded with crewmembers, either unwinding from first shift or preparing for third, all of them intent on food and conversation. The noise level was high, and no one paid the slightest attention to the two officers locked in one of their familiar disagreements.

“Illogical!” McCoy snorted. “What’s illogical is clinging to a maturity ritual that doesn’t serve a use anymore, especially when that ritual is too dangerous. And I suppose that Vulcans are so logical when it comes to their own children,” he scoffed. “They either overprotect them or they throw them to the le-matyas!” He emphatically placed his tray on the table and sat down with a thump.

Spock unloaded his dishes before a seat on the opposite side of the table, walked over to deposit his tray at a central gathering station, then seated himself facing McCoy. His movements were a study in economy and control. But there were no other senior officers at the table to witness his heroically restrained response to McCoy’s provocation.

“On Vulcan, there is a reason for our protective attitude towards children,” he explained, carefully enunciating each word. His gaze was steadfastly trained on the physician’s care-worn features. “The environment is harsh, so that survival techniques have always been essential for life. Surely you have noticed that maturation tests are common to planets and cultures where the physical environment is most challenging?”

“Yes, but....” Before McCoy could continue, the captain of the _Enterprise_ slipped into his accustomed spot next to Spock.

“Evening, Bones,” he nodded, taking in the physician’s hunched forward posture, the finger that was subsiding after pointing in the air. Kirk hadn’t walked ten feet into the rec room before his eyes had riveted on his two friends stalking to the table. He’d effortlessly identified the tension in his first officer’s ramrod straight spine, and hadn’t needed to see his CMO’s rolling eyes to guess the reason for the strain. He’d selected his dinner in record time.

“So,” Kirk said casually, shaking out his napkin, “what are you two talking about?”

“We are discussing respect for different cultures as exemplified by the spirit of the Prime Directive, Captain.” Spock speared a forkful of greens.

“We were talking,” McCoy almost hissed, ignoring his dinner to lean over the table in Kirk’s direction, “about how stupid it is for children to die in ceremonies that have no meaning.”

“Meanings are complex, and are often not obvious to those who are unfamiliar with the culture,” Spock commented sharply. He looked down at his plate, then continued in a more moderate tone. “However, even on a surface analysis, my previous comment holds. Rites of passage to adulthood that involve significant risk to the individual evolve most often on planets with harsh environments. You will notice that the Tungest Kingdom on Tellar has one, considerably more dangerous and with higher fatalities than the one we will witness on Shercata. Andoria, with its mild climate, lush vegetation and ample food has no such ritual, nor a need for one.” His gaze rose to meet McCoy’s in silent challenge.

Kirk glanced at the man by his side, surprised by Spock’s quiet vehemence and the disturbing emotions he was broadcasting so obviously, at least for anyone who knew him well. The first officer was staring stonily at the CMO, and the lines of his face were set in rigid patterns of control that Kirk hated to see.

Kirk turned back to McCoy, who was meeting the challenge of Spock’s glare with heightened color. Kirk was startled by his appearance; the physician looked ten years older than he was. There were dry, flaky spots on his cheeks, and the fine lines that had always been etched into his face seemed deeper than usual. McCoy was even breathing deeply, as if adrenalin were pumping into his system to prepare him for a physical confrontation that he was ill-equipped to face.

The air almost crackled. This conversation was far more than a typical disagreement between the two adversaries. The questions of life and tradition were obviously hitting a raw nerve with both men.

Kirk decided it was time he interjected a comment, especially if it could break the silent stalemate between his friends. “That’s right, Bones,” he said cautiously. “Earth had maturity rituals, too, plenty of cultures did. I did some research once on Native Americans when I was a kid in school. There was a time when it was bring back a scalp or be scalped.”

“But you did research.” McCoy broke his stare with Spock to glare at his captain. “The kids on Shercata will live it. We’re talking about two days out in the wild, with not even a knife to defend themselves. If they don’t make it back to the settlement, nobody goes out after them for a rescue. They’re just abandoned. Just like Spock here. He had to go through that Kahs-whatever-it-is when he was a kid, didn’t he? Now that’s an illogical tradition if I ever heard of one!” McCoy defiantly shoved a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

Next to him, Kirk felt Spock stiffen at the provocation. The sharp intake of breath was barely audible, but Kirk heard it as if Spock had shouted his anger. He knew without looking that his lover’s eyebrows had contracted with resentment. McCoy was treading on dangerous ground.

Spock just didn’t talk about his childhood. Kirk knew that it had not been easy, suspected that it had been painful. But he didn’t know any of the details. One short conversation with Amanda on the _Enterprise_ , a few hints that Spock had dropped here and there that Kirk had zealously picked up and guarded. One revealing conversation right before the two of them had become lovers six months ago, when Spock had told him about one of his few friendships as a child.

But so far the closeness that they’d experienced, the secret love that no one but the two of them knew about, had not extended beyond the barriers that Spock had securely erected around his past. His attitude defied any of his shipmates, even his lover and captain, to notice the darkened panorama of a desert landscape stretching behind him through time, shaping him into all that he had become. On the _Enterprise_ , whether on the bridge, the rec room, or in bed, the first officer’s past simply wasn’t mentioned.

McCoy hadn’t given up yet. He pointed his fork at Spock. “How old were you, anyway, when you went on that survival thing?”

Spock stared at the wall over McCoy’s head. “Vulcan boys are seven years of age when they become eligible for the Kahs-wan. They are judged to be sufficiently mature, mentally and physically, at that time.”

Fork and hand dropped to the table with a clatter. “Seven! You’ve got to be kidding! Even the kids down on Shercata are ten. How could a seven-year-old kid survive on the Vulcan desert?”

Spock’s gaze fell to meet McCoy’s. “I am living proof that such an attempt is possible. I survived.”

“But what’s the percentage, huh?” the doctor prodded. “How many children die on your precious desert? How many mothers cry on that day when they should be celebrating?”

Amazingly, Spock actually flinched. At least that was how Kirk interpreted the sudden movement backwards, and the way the first officer abruptly cast his gaze down to his plate.

There was a long moment of silence. Kirk frowned at McCoy.

But Bones refused to get the silent message; his gaze was trained on the Vulcan so obviously struggling for control.

Finally, Spock’s eyes flicked up at his adversary. “Doctor McCoy, Vulcan women do not cry. When... a boy I knew, Sreer, did not return from the desert, his mother did not cry.”

“You sure of that, Spock?” McCoy jabbed unkindly.

“Since I was not present in the boy’s household, no, Doctor, I am not,” Spock responded sharply. “But you seem to forget that the ways of Vulcan culture are not the ways of humans. There are other methods of dealing with loss than through the unfortunate release of uncontrolled emotion.”

“But your mother would have been plenty emotional, Spock, if it had been you who hadn’t come back. She would have cried.”

But this time Spock didn’t answer. The silence at the table deepened.

Hastily, Kirk tried to fill it. He steered the conversation back to the society they would be visiting tomorrow. “I don’t think we need to talk about some hypothetical scenario, Bones. It doesn’t matter what the Lady Amanda would or wouldn’t do. What matters is that whether you like it or not we’ve been invited to witness the Andoluse while we’re negotiating on Shercata. It’s considered a great honor. The clan leader told me they haven’t had a fatality in years. You won’t have a problem with it.” The last part came out sounding more like a command then he had intended it to.

“But there could be a fatality.” McCoy was like a hunting dog that wouldn’t leave a trail. “Why even take the risk? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“It is fortunate that not every culture must meet your standards, Doctor. Diversity would be lost.” Spock’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. But at least he was still talking.

McCoy’s hand smacked the table, and Kirk winced as if he had been struck. Next to him, Spock actually swayed back from his plate before folding his arms about his chest in a self-protective gesture. The intensity in McCoy’s piercing eyes escalated the disagreement to an even more uncomfortable level.

“I’m not talking about my own individual opinion here,” he said sharply. “Take a look at your own planet. What does everybody think of when you mention Vulcan? Logic. Right. Respect for life comes in a close second. That’s what makes your people such good negotiators. But there’s a contradiction there as big as the nose on your face. How can you reconcile respect for life with your outdated traditions that take lives? It simply isn’t logical.”

To Kirk’s surprise, Spock had an answer. In a tone of great control, he responded, “The ways of Surak are complex, the methods of control hard won. Only complete dedication of the mind and the body enabled my ancestors to arrest their self-destructive behavior. Now, in our modern technological society, there is much more that needs to be learned. Children must be guided....”

McCoy interrupted him, arms gesturing almost wildly. “But don’t you see the contradiction? You do have a modern technological society on Vulcan. The old dangers posed by your deserts just aren’t there any more. You put your children through that Kahs-whatever-it-is when there isn’t any need for it. How many of your Shikahr kids are gonna be out on the desert for any length of time? They’re just city kids. Most Vulcan children grow up to be technicians, or scientists, like you did, or maybe merchants. How many young Vulcans die every year just to satisfy the whims of tradition?”

Spock stared down at the surface of the table. “Doctor McCoy, I would hardly call thousands of years of custom that enabled a society to save itself from extinction, a ‘whim.’“

The deep voice was very even, the words spoken quietly, and not for the first time Kirk admired his Vulcan’s control. How could Bones not see what this conversation was costing Spock?

But McCoy didn’t, or perhaps refused to stop long enough to acknowledge the effect his words were having. “Well, maybe whim wasn’t the right word. But you know what I mean. If you’d stop to apply some of your own logic, you’d abolish the Kahs-wan. If Sarek had really been logical, wouldn’t he have told you not to go?”

The mention of his father’s name was the final provocation. Spock’s head snapped up in rigid attention. His eyes bored into a finally-silent McCoy’s for a full ten seconds, before he abruptly rose from his chair. “Doctor McCoy, you speak of things you do not understand. Captain, if you will excuse me, I have work that requires my attention.” He stalked away, leaving his meal behind him.

“Bones...,” Kirk said between gritted teeth, his eyes following the slim figure out the door.

McCoy hitched himself around in his chair to watch Spock’ s retreat as well. Slowly he said to the air, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t walking out of a room in the middle of an argument considered a sign of considerable emotion?” He turned back to Kirk and picked up his fork. “I think it’s about time Spock stopped being so sensitive about his childhood.” The spots of color on his cheeks were fading.

“Well, fighting with him about it in the middle of the rec room isn’t going to help any,” Kirk said sharply.

“Oh, get off it, Jim. You’re always taking Spock’s part lately, you know it? Lots of people had a tough time when they were kids. You did, when your father died. Besides, it’s psychologically unhealthy for Spock to keep repressing everything the way he does.”

“He doesn’t repress everything,” Kirk said, picking up his cup of coffee and staring into its depths. “He’s loosened up a lot.”

He hated having to talk to Bones so cautiously. How could they have a real conversation about Spock and his needs if Bones had no idea his two senior officers had been lovers for months? So much had changed, and Bones didn’t have a clue.

It couldn’t go on this way, Kirk told himself for the hundredth time. Bones deserved to know about them. There was something inside of Kirk that wanted to tell him. For despite Kirk’s reluctance to announce the change in his sexuality to the world, his intuition told him that after the shock had worn off Bones would be just the willing ear he needed.

Kirk sighed, and watched his breath send little ripples across the surface of his coffee. He had finally decided just a few shifts ago that he definitely wanted to tell McCoy, and he’d been waiting for the right time to broach the subject to Spock. Tonight had seemed like a good possibility... But now that his two friends had argued, there didn’t seem to be much sense to it. He’d have to wait.

McCoy snorted. “Spock? Loosened up? I sure don’t see it. That boy,” McCoy angled a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the doorway, “needs to have somebody to talk to. Really talk to, or one of these days he’s gonna bust.”

Kirk abruptly transferred his gaze from coffee cup to the official psychologist of the _Enterprise_. Even if McCoy didn’t know about their love affair, he did know how to read people. Even Vulcans. “You think so?”

“Uh-huh. He’s got more bottled up inside of him than most of us, and not much way to express it. Spock’s psych profile has always shown he’s got a need to communicate that he doesn’t fulfill, you and I have talked about that before. Why do you think I’m always pickin’ at him to let loose a little, show some emotion?”

Kirk was exasperated. “Now you’re sounding as contradictory as the Vulcans. I thought you just made fun of him for being so emotional that he got up and walked out on you.”

McCoy was quick to pounce on the support. “You think the Vulcans aren’t being logical about this survival business, too?”

Kirk nodded. “It’s never made any sense to me. But like Spock says, I guess they have their own reasons. And I sure have better sense than to bait him into trying to talk about it like you did.”

“I wasn’t baiting him,” McCoy hotly denied, then he shrugged his shoulders. Gruffly he said, “Well, maybe I overdid it a little. I kinda got worked up.”

“Yeah, you did. But I wonder if you really do have a point. You think that if he opened up a little more, Spock would be... what? Healthier? Happier?”

McCoy nodded, and quickly picked up a cob of corn. Both of them were trying hard to steer their conversation back to normal, away from the emotional precipice on which they’d lingered. “Right,” he mumbled around a mouthful. “But don’t tell him I said so. I don’t want him to think I go around dreaming up ways our Vulcan first officer can be happy.”

Kirk mumbled under his breath, and reached for a roll.

“What’s that, Jim?” McCoy inquired.

“I said,” Kirk repeated, distinctly, “I’ll see what I can do about it.”

McCoy eyed him doubtfully. “Yeah. Right.” He dropped the corn on his plate and hitched forward in his chair. “Look, Jim, I didn’t have this conversation with Spock just to get him to open up. I really don’t want to have to see that stupid survival ceremony. Is there any way....”

 

 

Spock stood next to his desk and stared at the door of the bathroom that joined his quarters with Kirk’s. If he did not initiate their interaction tonight, Spock knew that Jim would not. Unfortunately, Jim had witnessed his disagreement with McCoy, and would not disturb his attempt to regain his equilibrium. Too many times in the past Spock had brushed aside his friend’s efforts to help with the explanation that he required solitude. Now Jim granted solitude even when it was not truly desired.

Impatiently, Spock turned and stared at the idlomputt glowing in the corner of his sleeping chamber. His efforts at meditation had not been successful tonight. There was no balance in his soul. From his ineptitude, one would think that he had never proudly worn his clan’s Ilk’kroyanim about his neck, never achieved the first level. His incompetence made him angry, and the anger made him ashamed.

What confronted him in his office area only added fuel to his agitated emotional state. Spock looked down at his desk. He had already tended to the ubiquitous paperwork his position as first officer entailed. Seven tapes, all official ship’s business, were neatly filed in the appropriate slots next to the computer viewscreen. He had carefully reviewed each report. But concentration upon scheduling and personnel had not diverted his mind from the dis-tasteful emotions that had descended upon him, and there was no more ship’s business behind which to hide.

Spock turned and his eyes flicked over the low storage credenza that was behind his desk. He had no taste for the only task that presented itself. The letter tape from his mother had arrived three weeks ago. For eighteen long years during Spock’s estrangement from Sarek, Amanda had dutifully corresponded with her son every four months, precisely, as any good Vulcan on a schedule would. The letters had been strained, often trivial. She had apparently not known what to write to her too-long-gone son, and he had certainly not known how to respond to her. Those communications had always been... difficult.

Now Sarek usually joined in the letters from Shikahr, but Amanda still occasionally sent one over her signature alone. Spock wished that she would not. He still labored over the composition of a reply; it was much more difficult, he found, to write to his mother alone, to the parent who had not rejected him, than it was to write to his parents together. It was an illogical situation that puzzled him. He looked at the tape again. He would not answer it tonight.

Restlessly, Spock’s gaze wandered over to the stack of journals he had already read, and the pile of class assignments he had already reviewed. For once, the efficiency of which he was secretly proud annoyed him.

There was simply nothing left to do.

Except think. And after the disaster of his meditation exercises, he did not wish to indulge in solitary reflection. That would be illogical, since such an action would guarantee an encounter with negative emotions that were not yet under control. He had thought his... feelings about his difficult childhood had been supplanted by mature experience. Apparently not. Spock either faced the prospect of retiring to a probably sleepless night or... seeking company.

Sleeping alone, when he and Jim had made a habit of sleeping together as often as they could, did not appeal to him. He required....

Spock did not know exactly what he required. A cessation to the disturbing images of pale flesh, blazing sun and endless desert that had hung on the edges of his consciousness all evening. A way to force memories from long ago back into their proper places, into perspective. He needed a way to reconcile the flash of irrational anger that had consumed him at McCoy’s temerity.

He needed... Jim.

The first stirrings of desire plucked at Spock’s body. Suddenly the thought of physical release was infinitely attractive. And then he would rest his head upon the curve of Jim’s strong shoulder and drift into slumber. It would be easy, it would be comforting. Often they lay thus after consummating their physical passion. It would feel so good to....

Perhaps, it was possible. But it was late. It was also possible that Jim had already retired and was sleeping.

The lights were on in the captain’s quarters when Spock emerged from their joint bathroom. Kirk was still in uniform and sat upon the side of his bed, one of the new double beds that he had only recently ordered the quartermaster to install for the four senior officers on the _Enterprise_. One boot was in his hand, a stockinged foot rested over one knee. He favored Spock with an open smile.

“Hi.”

Spock swallowed. Despite the familiarity he had gained over the past six months with this intimate scenario, he felt suddenly very awkward. How to baldly ask for what he wanted? Was it not reprehensible to use their intimate relationship as just another distraction from what disturbed him?

Kirk ignored his lover’s silence. He dropped his foot to the floor, and started to pull off his other boot. “I was hoping you’d finish meditating before I went to bed. This bunk is too big for just one of us to sleep in.”

Spock struggled to find his voice. He did not wish to appear overcome with emotion. He had already made enough of a scene in the mess. “Indeed. We are unused to so much space.”

“Yep,” Kirk said cheerfully. He stood up, stretched his arms up in the air, and yawned. Then he walked over to the still figure standing in the doorway and placed one hand on each shoulder. “Feeling better?” he asked quietly, peering into the closed face.

“I am well.” Jim would not be deceived, but somehow the truth of the tumult inside him stayed far from Spock’s lips.

The corners of Kirk’s mouth quirked inward, and his face tilted to one side. “Right,” he said. His hands squeezed, then dropped away. Kirk briskly turned towards the bunk, stripping off his tunic as he went. “Let’s go to bed, all right? It’s late.”

When Spock returned form the bathroom, conspicuously nude, Kirk was already in under the sheet, and the room was awash in shadows. Carefully, Spock slid under the mound of blankets that always guarded his side of the bed.

“Jim?” he whispered.

Kirk rolled over onto his side. “Uh-huh?”

“I would like to... engage in sexual activity tonight.”

With love, and knowledge of the altercation in the mess to guide him, Kirk read the uncertainties behind that statement. One blunt-fingered hand caressed the curve of Spock’s shoulder. “I don’t think you’ll hear me objecting. Don’t we every night? Hmmm?” The hand moved down to rest lightly over the slight swell of Spock’s breast. Its coolness made the sensitive nipple contract.

“Not every night, Captain.” Relief washed over Spock. Jim loved to tease him in this wonderful, intimate way. They often spoke lightly to one another. Now it was a pleasure to retreat into the familiar. “We have often fallen asleep without physical interaction. I estimate that we fail to engage in coitus approximately....”

“Approximately, Commander?” Kirk interrupted him. “Approx...,” Kirk grunted in mid-word as he rolled over on top of his bedmate. “...imately?” he continued as he stared down into Spock’s face. “I must really have you distracted if you don’t know exactly how many times we’ve made love.”

Spock reached up to stroke the side of Kirk’s face. His other hand rested lightly on the curve of his lover’s waist. Jim’s skin was so incredibly soft, everywhere. “There can be no doubt,” he whispered, “that I am distracted by you. But I also know exactly how many times we have expressed our affection for one another.”

Kirk groaned. “I don’t want to hear it.” Then he leaned forward and pressed their lips together.

The touch of Kirk’s tongue, just the tip of that moist coolness seeking sanctuary within him, was so stimulating, and yet comforting at the same time. Spock opened his mouth wider, and slowly slid his arms further up Jim’s shoulders, supporting him, indicating his own willingness to pursue the gentle mood his lover was setting for their physical encounter tonight.

Their lips softened and they parted. Kirk gently shook the narrow shoulders. “You feel tense,” he chided. “Let’s do something about that. Turn over.” He lifted up as his hands urged Spock over to his stomach, then he settled back down over the warm form.

“Relax,” he murmured, lips moving against the back of Spock’s neck.

Spock snuggled deeper into the pillow. Kirk kissed across the line of his shoulder, then down to the elbow of his left arm, little, butterfly kisses that barely grazed his sensitized skin, harder, smacking kisses that made a sucking sound in the quiet of the room.

Spock inhaled sharply and closed his eyes. After months of loving, Jim knew exactly which caresses excited him the most. The warm, succulent touch of his human lover was now traveling in precise spaces down the column of his spine, and when the lips reached the small of Spock’s back they lingered there, as Spock had hoped they would.

A wet tongue swiped along the sensitive indentations that were erogenous zones for male Vulcans.

“Ahhhh.” Spock did not try to restrain the exclamation that escaped his lips. His penis began to swell as shivers of sensation moved out from his back to settle in his groin. He pushed his hardness against the mattress, wanting more.

Kirk substituted his fingers for his lips and kneaded against the soft skin in a motion that he knew gave Spock pleasure. He was fascinated by this difference in his lover’s body, as he was by the twin-ridged cock, and the green-rimmed anus....

Shifting lower down in the bed, Kirk kept one hand flat against Spock’s back, still kneading, and used the other to pull one asscheek to the side. Starting down low, he swiped his tongue up one side of the crevasse and then down the other.

Spock’s body under his shivered, and a low breathy moan filled the air.

Kirk shivered too. He loved it when Spock was excited enough to give in to his tendency to make noise during their lovemaking; it never failed to make his cock stretch in longing.

Kirk’s tongue found the tight muscle that guarded the entrance to Spock’s body. He felt it contract as he teased the skin all around it with wet licks. He reveled in the different textures of soft skin and tensed muscle, basked in the dry heat that radiated from his lover.

Spock bucked against the mattress. “Jim...,” he hoarsely whispered, “if your intention is to relax me, I must tell you that you have failed notably.”

Kirk chuckled. “I have?” he teased, following Spock’s lead. “Well, if this isn’t working, maybe I should try something else. Come on, turn over.”

Again he urged Spock over. Spock spread his legs wide. His penis, ridges flared out, pointed to the ceiling proudly. He expected Kirk to now pay proper attention to his sexual organ; he failed to see the playful light in his lover’s eyes.

Kirk flipped over to settle on his side, with his head on a level with the long and narrow feet. In puzzlement, Spock looked down just in time to see Kirk lower his lips over his right big toe, and start to suck.

“Jim!” Spock gasped. He swallowed hard; Jim’s lips were contracting rhythmically, causing the most unusual sensations to go shooting up his spine.

Kirk tilted his head to one side, mouth still fastened on a Vulcan digital extremity, and looked up mischievously at his panting and indignant bedmate.

Spock returned the look as warily as his arousal allowed him. What exactly did this action mean? Was it a manifestation of his lover’s uninhibited sexuality that had previously been in hiding? Or was it some obscure way of diverting Spock’s mind from the incident in the mess with McCoy? With Kirk, either was possible.

“What are you doing?” The question in his mind found expression. Open communication between the two of them was vital, that they had both agreed upon months ago.

Kirk put his hand up to encircle the big foot, and firmly placed his thumb over the toe, as if to mark his spot while he was gone.

“I am appreciating your feet,” Kirk said simply, then leaned over to bestow kisses on the very tops of each of the long toes. “You have very attractive feet.”

Spock stared down at the foot encased in a loving grasp. He had never considered the relative attractiveness of his extremities, but looking at them now they did not appear to be in the least appealing. Somewhat large, especially as compared with his lover’s aesthetically pleasing, although admittedly small-sized hands. “It seems... somewhat unhygienic,” Spock offered tentatively.

Kirk chuckled. “Not as unhygienic as some other things we do.”

Spock tilted his head with a practiced poker face. “You refer to anal intercourse,” he said with composure. “Not to mention the activity in which you were engaged a moment ago. I agree. However, I was not aware that you suffered from the unusual human predilection for... feet.”

This time Kirk’s chuckle turned into a laugh. “Afraid I have a hidden foot fetish?” he teased and shook his head. “I don’t. I just suddenly got the urge....” He looked at Spock seriously. “But I won’t do this if it makes you uncomfortable. There’s plenty more of you to love.”

Spock held out a restraining hand, although he noticed that Kirk made no move to shift his position. There was no doubt in his mind that Kirk used his persuasive powers in many different ways, on the bridge and in the bedroom as well. That fact did not disturb him; in a way, it highlighted many of the features about his captain that Spock found... interesting.

“I did not mean to ask you to stop. I was simply... startled. Such an action on your part was unexpected.”

“I know,” Kirk breathed. He was preoccupied, lapping along the underside of Spock’s well-arched foot.

It was a decidedly odd sensation, one Spock was not sure that he liked, disliked, or was merely indifferent to. Additional study was called for, and yet there also seemed to be a definite inhibition present in the bed with them. Perhaps cultural.... He closed his eyes, frustrated in more ways than one.

“Want me to stop?” a soft voice asked.

“Negative,” Spock answered sharply. Blindly his hand searched for the body next to him. His fingers settled around the curve of buttocks, and roughly Spock pulled his lover close. “Give me a moment....” He kept his grip; the contact seemed to help. He concentrated.

A long thirty seconds passed. Kirk watched while Spock thought, wondering what was going through that mind that he so admired. Soon the answer became obvious, for the tension that had been evident in the lean body began to dissipate. The Vulcan in his bed was relaxing....

“Should I guess what you were just doing?” Kirk asked softly.

Spock tilted his head with a rustle of the pillowcase to look down at his lover. “I was employing the imagery we have used before. An Iowa garden wall with a gate in it. I chose to walk through it in order to open myself to a new experience.”

Quiet pride coursed through Kirk. The images of the wall and the gate existed just between Spock and him.

“Was it hard to walk through?” Kirk often wondered about the changes in Spock that had made their affair possible, about the cost they must have exacted on the Vulcan soul. It had been such a fast six months, with both their lives turned upside down. It was one of the reasons that Kirk wished he could talk to Bones, to gain some perspective.

The hand on Kirk’s ass smoothed in a loving circle. “With you on the other side?” Spock asked. He smiled at his t’hy’la. “No.”

Kirk smiled back, a loving, genuine smile that he sometimes felt he had never bestowed on anyone else. It carried part of his soul.

“Did you know,” he asked quietly, “that you are the most fantastic person, and lover, that I have ever known.”

Now there was a twinkle in the brown eyes. An eyebrow arched. “Merely because I will allow you access to my toes? Illogical. I am committed to you. I will strive to allow you access to any part of me you desire.”

“Even this?” Kirk looked down at where he was still holding his just-found treasure, but a part of him wondered. He couldn’t help but remember his talk with McCoy. “Any part of me,” Spock had said. And yet Kirk knew that didn’t include the answers to his unvoiced questions about his lover’s shrouded past. That part of Spock they still weren’t sharing. It was hidden, and Kirk didn’t know how to go about finding it.

“Whatever you want,” Spock affirmed, his voice warm with affection. “The gate is open.”

Kirk’s frustrated melancholy evaporated. “You’re on, lover,” he growled happily, and temporarily at least, banished his concerns.

Kirk placed his mouth over Spock’s big toe. He sucked, using his tongue to run up and down its length, treating it the same way that he treated the long, narrow cock that he had grown to love. The phallic symbolism intrigued him, and he pretended it really was the warm length that pulsed with life between his lips.

For a while Kirk thought that he was the only one who was going to enjoy this activity, for although Spock relaxed to allow it, his body didn’t tense again in sexual enjoyment. Kirk glanced up the length of pale skin. The crown on the Vulcan prick was still widely flared in arousal. At least Spock didn’t seem to dislike this....

And that was when Kirk felt the growing pressure on his ass. Experimentally, he sucked more vigorously, and those widely spread fingers definitely pressed in harder against his asscheek. He swiped a tongue along the toe from base to nail, and his lover’s thumb jerked convulsively. He shifted to flick just the tip of his tongue along each of the five digits, and the long forefinger slipped along the sensitive skin of his crease, teasing near his anus. Kirk pulled back and breathed along the moistness his mouth had left behind. Spock emitted a long sigh, and Kirk felt his own cock swell in appreciation. The old, familiar need was there, made new each time by the wonder of their unexpected love; he wanted Spock’s touch on his hardness.

With one last kiss for each of the newly-met toes, Kirk abandoned his lover’s feet, rolled over to disengage the fierce hold that Spock had on his ass, then twisted up and over so that he was facing Spock on his side.

Spock rolled over, and they both looked down to watch as he maneuvered his fully-erect cock to rest just next to the rosy one, kissing.

Kirk leaned forward for a kiss of his own. “Ummmm,” he murmured against the silken lips.

He groped for and found Spock’s hand, and pressed it over his own aching cock, covering the long fingers with his shorter ones, curving Spock’s warmth around the life that now pulsed only for his touch. Kirk stroked the long, fine bones, the hairless warmth of skin, feeling his own arousal through the motion and the curve of his lover’s fingers. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love every part of you.”

Spock drew in his breath with the declaration, closing his eyes and then opening them, staring into the sincerity evident in Kirk’s handsome face. How many times had Jim said “I love you” to him? And yet each time the words stirred something so precious and fine within him, making Spock want to throw the arms of his soul around the only one who had ever seen through his defenses, seen to the truths that had been hidden for so long....

Spock could not describe the cushiony softness that settled within his chest. It felt like the times when I’Chaya and he had been permitted to lay together before the family hearth, in the evenings while his parents read....

Suddenly the memory was as clear as if it were happening at that moment.

_The boy could feel the soft fur of the body against which he leaned, felt the slight heaving as his childhood companion panted. He heard Sarek’s murmurs to Amanda, the crackle of the fire, the rustle as his fair-haired mother stood to remove the jacket of her gown because she felt the heat of the room. The boy looked up at her. The room shimmered, the image began to collapse. His mother’s face was streaked with a single drop of perspiration...._

The memory surged within him, like a live thing aching to be released from captivity. _I am the darkness,_ the captive whispered. _I am the lightning and the thunder... I will storm within you until you set me free...._

Abruptly, Spock guided Kirk’s hand to a twin-ridged hardness. “Touch me,” he gasped. “Please, touch me.”

Kirk wrapped his fingers around the velvety head and squeezed. Spock jerked with the sensation, closed his eyes and sighed. This was real, he told himself. Not illogical voices whispering of pain and confusion. Reality was Jim’s body next to his, words of promise and passion alive in the air between them. Spock leaned forward, pursing his lips and blindly seeking contact.

They kissed, a deep open-mouthed kiss that sizzled with a physical passion that matched the intensity of their emotions. The touch of Jim’s coolness felt so good, so good, it was just what Spock needed, what he craved....

_Balm, balm, a soothing balm, like the caress of wind blowing from the L-langon mountains on a hot, breathless day, like his mother’s hand in his as they walked along the scented pathways of their private garden...._

Spock gasped against the mouth pressing against his. “Yes,” he whimpered, before rationality returned.

Ruthlessly Spock suppressed the memory. He tore himself open to physical sensation, to the energizing touch of Jim’s cool hand on his penis, to the warmth of Jim’s organ moving in his grasp, to the pleasure that coursed through his veins, building, building.... It was easy to do. Sizzling delight swept through him, replacing the pale ghosts from long ago. How could anything else be real next to this white-hot awareness of every cell in his groin, called to vibrant, straining excitement by love?

He wanted more, and Spock knew that Kirk would give it to him. With an excited groan that ended almost like a hiccup, Spock rolled over on top of Kirk. “I wish to penetrate you,” he gasped, and without waiting for a response he groped for the lubricant from the bedside table.

Kirk took in a deep breath, pulled his knees up to his chest and held them there. This wasn’t how he’d been thinking they would end their lovemaking, but this was obviously what Spock needed. His lover so seldom asked for the dominant role that Kirk never failed to give it to him generously, with joy.

Now he watched while Spock hastily lubricated himself. Unless they melded, Spock would probably come first, and Kirk’s cock gave a little throb of envy at the thought. He was still getting used to the feeling of Spock’s hot organ up his ass; even when it rubbed against his prostate he was never able to come from the anal stimulation alone. And he hadn’t been given many opportunities to get used to that unique sensation. From the very beginning, it had seemed so natural, so right for him to sink into Spock’s body that Kirk had enthusiastically and frequently fucked his lover, to their mutual pleasure; long years of being the heterosexual aggressor had established the dominant role as an almost essential habit in Kirk’s sexual life.

Almost essential. For now Kirk wasn’t in a heterosexual relationship. He loved another man, with all the differences and adjustments that entailed. Kirk knew that Spock had found a fulfillment in the passive role that he had not yet achieved, and there was a part of him that was intensely curious, almost envious of that accomplishment. He wondered at Spock’s obvious pleasure every time he was mounted over the flat, pale buttocks, or driving in against folded knees so that he could see the swells of passion overcome the usually-controlled features. Kirk, naturally adventurous, and still grappling with the effects of his newly discovered bi-sexuality, saw learning to truly enjoy being penetrated as a challenge.

But while there had been occasions when Spock had taken his pleasure between Kirk’s willingly spread legs, they had been few and far between. As Kirk looked up at the intent face of his lover now, he wondered why the aggressive impulse had chosen this moment to surface. Looking back over the past six months, he thought he detected a pattern....

Spock’s cream-coated finger found its way inside Kirk in a swift motion, swirled against the slick walls, then retreated. Then Spock was leaning on outstretched arms, and Kirk felt a heated tip press against him as Spock flexed his hips forward. He concentrated on relaxing against the steady pressure.

Spock emitted a loud, long groan as he pushed inside. “Ohhhhh,” he cried, his head thrown back.

Kirk’s pulse raced at the sight and the sound. He abandoned his hold on his knees, grabbed the tensed arms, and lovingly embraced the invader in his body by contracting his muscles around the hot prick.

“Spock!” he panted. He felt every centimeter of the heat within him, Spock’s body temperature insured that. Kirk was acutely aware of the way the long penis stretched him out, knew exactly how high up in his body it went. When he moved to accommodate Spock’s thrusting movements he felt the withdrawal as the absence of heat, and the thrusting in as a return to a burning that verged on the brink of being painful. But it never was. Spock’s heat never scalded him.

He looked up at the fine head above him. Kirk felt a thrill go up his spine as passion swept across his lover’s features. He loved this. Loved it! More than anything else, even plunging his own cock deep inside Spock’s receptive ass, he loved to see the transformation of his sternly logical first officer into a passionate lover. Watching Spock, his eyes closed in ecstasy, his lips parted with a sharply indrawn breath that told of his overwhelming pleasure, was the best part of making love.

Kirk tightened his grasp on the thin arms. “Yes,” he encouraged, “Yes!”

Spock panted urgently, thrust forward with a sharp snap of his hips, and opened his eyes to look down at Kirk with an unmistakable passionate glitter. He balanced himself on one hand, wrapped the crook of his other arm around Kirk’s knee for support, and grabbed at the organ standing in the air between them.

“Jim,” he rasped, “come with me. Can you? Now!”

Kirk could no more deny that command then he could live without air, or without Spock. He shuddered, trying hard to hold the image of his lover’s passion-drenched face in focus even as he felt the unmistakable roiling in his balls that foretold climax.

“Love you!” he croaked, just as he felt Spock’s touch drive him over the edge. “Yes, yes, yes!” he cried, and pumped creamy fluid all over the insistent, pulling fingers.

“Jim...” Spock moaned. He shuddered into climax.

They sighed at exactly the same moment, and relaxed into satiation together.

“Thank you, t’hy’la,” Spock whispered into the bronze-gold hair. He withdrew his already-shrinking penis and carefully released his hold upon the human organ as he rolled over onto his back; Kirk was very sensitive immediately after orgasm.

Kirk followed him over onto the pillow and entwined his fingers in the wiry chest hair. “You bet, lover,” he whispered.

They spent a few minutes in contented silence. Spock knew that they should clean themselves soon, and prepare for sleep and the myriad duties of the next day. But for now he just wanted to drift far away from those strangely compelling images from long ago, images that had even invaded the bed he shared with his lover. He wanted to revel in the sensation of lying in his captain’s bed, his captain’s head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder, his captain’s body resting within the curve of his arm.

But Kirk was having far different thoughts. “Happy”, Bones had said. Spock would be happier and healthier if he were able to talk about the things that bothered him. And Kirk was very certain that his reticent lover had been profoundly bothered by the emotional discussion in the rec room. The uncharacteristic aggression, welcome as it was, must have something to do with the argument. Perhaps now, in the comfort of afterglow, was the right time to offer a willing ear.

He began to stroke through the hair between his fingers. “Spock,” Kirk asked quietly, “would you like to talk about what happened in the rec room with McCoy?”

All of Spock’s contentment scattered with the words. Wrenching his mind away from lassitude to the unpleasant recollection of McCoy’s provocations was almost a physical, painful effort. Abruptly he shifted away from his lover, then turned on his side to face Kirk. “Negative,” he said flatly. “I would not.”

Kirk had expected that answer. He forged ahead. “I haven’t seen you and Bones go at it like that for a long time.”

Spock moved his head against the pillow impatiently. “It was Doctor McCoy who elected to attack the culture of my planet; I merely defended it.” The lingering shreds of the anger from the rec room flavored the declaration.

“I know,” Kirk soothed. “You seemed... pretty upset when you left, though. I just wondered if maybe it would help to talk it out.”

Restlessly, Spock rolled onto his back again and stared up at the ceiling. He blinked once, twice, slow deliberate movements of his lids and lashes that Kirk watched intently. “I will admit that I experienced some emotional turmoil that I found difficult to control at the time. However, my response has been moderated. There is no requirement to converse about the incident. You forget, I am not a human. I am Vulcan. There is no necessity for a Vulcan to purge himself of inner reflections the way that humans do.”

It was the same mantra that Kirk had heard time and again. “I am a Vulcan.” But Kirk remembered McCoy’s words. “Spock’s psych profile has always shown he’s got a need to communicate that he doesn’t fulfill.” Kirk had instinctively known that from the day he had first boarded the _Enterprise_. He had seen it confirmed a hundred times over in the intimacy of their love.

And yet, Spock obviously didn’t agree. Once again, his lover was sublimating his own personal needs to the image of the perfect Vulcan that he carried around in his head.

“Okay,” Kirk whispered, retreating yet not surrendering. He reached for a tensed upper arm. “Then let’s talk about this mission to Shercata.”

Spock turned his head to look at his captain, surprised at the sudden change of topic. “About what aspect would you like to converse?”

“About Shercata and you. Listen,” he hastened to add, as he saw Spock start to turn away, “I’m not stupid. I understand that part of the reason you got so upset with Bones today were the parallels between your own experience as a boy and this Andoluse. Maybe this mission strikes too close to home for you. Maybe it would be a good idea if you stayed on the ship instead of Scotty. You can take the _Enterprise_ to Dosus III. I’ll have your second in Science beam down with us instead.”

“I would prefer to go. I have already conducted the briefings,” Spock objected, one eyebrow rising. “And I intend to use this mission as an opportunity to evaluate Ensign Hunyady for possible promotion.”

“I understand that,” Kirk said. “But I also understand that for some reason this mission is upsetting you. Your presence isn’t essential. Why don’t you stay here? I can live without you for four or five days. I wouldn’t want you to have to cope with a lot of unhappy memories.”

Spock stared sightlessly at the bulkhead. “It is true,” he said, remembering the images that had shared the bed with them only minutes ago, “that the occasion of our visit to this planet has prompted old memories to re-surface. However, until recently, I would have denied the adjective ‘unhappy.’ What has been, has been. I have attempted to deal with the unpleasant aspects of my childhood and youth in a logical manner. However,” he swallowed, a loud sound in the otherwise silent room, “logic also compels me to admit that for some reason memories that were previously unaccompanied by negative sensations are now... disturbing.”

Kirk sat up with the revelation. “You mean, before now you were able to disconnect the memory from the accompanying emotion? Things that didn’t hurt you when you remembered them before do now?” This was an aspect of Vulcan control that he hadn’t considered before.

Slowly Spock nodded. “Yes. I believe that would be an adequate way of expressing the situation. I feel... beset by emotions, brought about by memories that have never before carried such associations. I am at a loss to explain why. I do not deny my previous experiences. I have always simply attempted to place them in the proper perspective. That perspective now seems to be... gone.”

“That’s why the argument with Bones got so out of hand,” Kirk mused.

“No,” Spock interjected sharply, and he sat up next to Kirk. His voice hardened and his eyebrows contracted in defiance. “The doctor has no respect for culture. He challenges the very basis of Surak’s way. He does not even understand what he attacks.”

“Okay, okay,” Kirk soothed, placing one hand on his lover’s tensed thigh. He didn’t want their discussion to get sidetracked by the eternal conflict between reason and emotion.

Spock took in a deep breath and stared down at the sheet. “You see that I have not completely reconciled my experience with the good doctor. I apologize for my emotional outburst.”

“You don’t have to apologize for anything. Remember what we promised each other? This is one of those times when we really need to....”

“...communicate,” Spock finished with a sigh. It had been a solemn promise between them, a promise that took the place of the vows they had so far denied themselves. “Yes. However,” Spock abandoned his contemplation of the bedding and looked up. “It is a simple thing to promise to communicate. Implementing it is obviously not so simple. I do not understand myself why I have been so disturbed. I do not believe I know what to tell you.”

Kirk raised one hand in the air, his fingers curved unmistakably. “I know one way that might help. Try to show me in a meld.”

Spock’s shoulders slumped. “Jim, do not succumb to a common human misconception. You are already aware that no mind is ever completely open to another, not even in the melds we share.”

“I know that. I’ve been there with you, remember? But melding might give us a different perspective. It can’t hurt, Spock,” Kirk said persuasively. “And I’ll have plenty of time to recover before duty shift tomorrow. Why shouldn’t we? We both love doing it. I want to love your mind tonight.”

Spock eyed his lover, a flicker of resentment growing within him. He had sought Jim’s company so that he would not have to deal with the discomfort of his past. But he should have known better. Jim could be so persistent. It was one of his command traits. Was this how the Klingon Commander Karadell had felt as Kirk and the _Enterprise_ had chased him back to his side of the border?

Spock lay back against the pillow and turned upon his side, his motions mirrored by his bedmate. Long fingers moved to initiate the joining that Kirk could only mimic. They were lovers, in the human and the Vulcan way. This was Jim’s right. Even if they would find absolutely nothing revealing within the meld. Just old memories that needed to be controlled again, that meant nothing at all....

Spock kept their connection superficial, and Kirk knew better than to try to move beyond the merest of mental joinings. The golden light in which they usually basked was shot through with dense streamers of purple, a color Kirk had learned to interpret as representing the negative emotions that Spock could not hide within the meld. Far off, like dark clouds on the horizon of this world inhabited only by two, blotches of black and grey and brown rumbled, threatening to drown their golden landscape with the ugliness within.

Kirk had seen the clouds before. From the very first time when he and Spock had ecstatically entwined their minds, not from any call of duty but simply for themselves, the darkness had been with them. Sometimes barely seen, far off, sometimes a visible presence, never had the swirling colors been as close and foreboding as they were tonight. The clouds were heavy with a curious mixture from both Terra and Vulcan; cold rain and the excoriating sand of a Vulcan sandstorm threatened.

Within the meld, the astral presence that was Kirk eyed the gloom with misgiving. Even from this distance, he could sense the acrid-smelling world of long ago that was a representation of his lover’s past. He could see flashes of red sky and golden desert, robed figures walking stiffly.

_So much pain,_ he mused.

_In the past._ The glowing specter that was Spock moved closer. His intention of blotting out the darkness with his own light was immediately apparent.

Gently, Kirk reached out with a tendril of his own thought, twirling it around the warm colors that were the inner essence of the man he loved. The tendril tugged, trying to turn Spock around to face the glowering horizon, but he resisted.

_No. That is not necessary. It all happened long ago. It no longer has meaning._ Another smudged streamer of purple erupted near them, casting a shadow over their linked bodies of light. Resentment colored the air. _It has no place here, with you._

Soothing. _That’s part of what you are. All of us are the sum total of our experiences. I love you. All of you._

The golden light flared into brilliance. Passionate tones of orange and red merged with and overcame the purple. _Yes. You love me. I love you._

_Even this?_ The air parted as Kirk projected some of his own memories. A ten-year-old tousle-headed boy ran crying into his bedroom, walked behind his mother in a solemn funeral procession, stared morosely up at stars that had taken his father away. Kirk projected the despair he’d felt, his irrational anger at a universe uncaring of the desperate needs of a little boy.

Spock did not flinch away from the raw human emotions untempered by perspective or experience. _I grieve with thee._ The formal Vulcan declaration flared from the Spock figure to the Kirk figure, a living bridge of emotion: love and regret.

_I know you do. And someday, you’ll let me grieve with you, for all your hurts that aren’t healed._

An angry green appeared. It was almost black, the color of spilt blood sinking into the desert sands. _Doctor McCoy,_ the physician’s image flared, backlit by lightning from within the clouds, _has unnecessarily infected you with his intrusive concern. I have no grief to share. These memories should not hold meaning. I will be able to control them soon. They have no bearing on what I am now._

Kirk tried another tack. _McCoy loves you._

Purple flared again. _Impossible._

Rather than spar with imperfect words, Kirk thought of McCoy’s gruff concern for the first officer, expressed so roughly that evening. Then other images flashed from his mind into their shared consciousness: McCoy rubbing his chin, McCoy furrowing his brow, McCoy worrying and wondering about the unique hybrid being who was in his charge. Worrying about his friend.

_I am an interesting medical phenomena for him to study._ Scorn, and a wistful hurt Spock could not conceal.

_No._ Another image. McCoy sitting by a sickbay bed, his head nodding, then jerking upright to check the monitors that told of the first officer’s struggle for life.

_I am a burden on his medical resources. My differences are a strain on his ability to accept and understand._ Stubbornly, Spock refused to see the care expressed in the exhausted face of the physician.

Far, far away, Kirk could feel the stiffness of the warm body that lay rigidly against his. It was a symptom of their lack of communion within this shallow meld; usually they could not feel their bodies at all. Perhaps it had been a mistake for him to insist on this. Now they were as close to an argument within their mental joining as they had ever been, and Kirk was profoundly disturbed. He hadn’t thought it was possible. Their melds had always given them a world of peace and joy, and a special understanding of each other that both he and Spock craved. It was why he had pressed for a meld tonight; even if it did not grant a resolution of Spock’s troubles, he’d thought that at least it would bring them joy. But now the purple was getting stronger, almost equal to the shining gold.

And Kirk knew that Spock was watching the purple too.

The golden figure moved closer, and Kirk’s perception of their physical bodies melted away as Spock deepened the meld. _T’hy’la, let us not mar our joining in this way. Come. See what I feel for you. See what you mean to me. Come to me._ Persuasion edged with need.

For a long moment, Kirk hesitated, seeing the faraway clouds that were filled with sand and rain blowing to wispy shreds in the face of Spock’s determined wind. A part of him regretted their dissipation. He yearned to move under the clouds to face the torrent they would release. He wanted to wrestle with and abolish the pain that still shrieked from the inner recesses of his loved one’s soul. Ever ready for action, it was hard for him to wait.

It wasn’t that Spock didn’t trust him. But how could Spock reveal what he would not himself acknowledge? Kirk’s lover was a very stubborn being. Forcing the issue now would accomplish nothing.

The tantalizing allure of a deep meld beckoned, and not even his concern could keep Kirk from the happiness that he knew the two of them would find there. They both needed it. He wanted it. A deep joining might sustain Spock during a time of doubt and confusion. Kirk turned his back on the dark horizon, and lost himself in the light.  
   
CHAPTER TWO

McCoy wiped the sweat from his eyes on his bare forearm and peered at the walkers in front of him. When were they going to stop and get introduced to this precious dep weed they were negotiating for? It seemed like they’d already been tromping through the forest for half the morning.

Leading the column was Kirk, deep in conversation with Clan Leader Sh’shon Dlana Meriti, daughter of Rusenton. The slight woman looked like a Terran daffodil brightening the somber greens and browns of the forest, for she was wearing a yellow jumpsuit that revealed every curve of her body, including the unmistakable bulge of an unborn child. Like every other Binian who came in contact with the party from the Federation, she wore the latest, slim-line version of the universal translator around her neck. No one wanted any misunderstandings in the delicate negotiations for the drug that would save millions of lives and gain the Binians billions of credits.

Kirk was bending over towards Dlana and gesturing in that intense characteristic way he had whenever he was trying to make a point. McCoy frowned sourly. He’d bet that the captain wasn’t even aware of the heat or the humidity, he was so intent on every aspect of the negotiations.

Behind them one of Dlana’s husbands from her group marriage, Sh’tuk Raton Meriti, son of Helar, was listening to the two leaders, nodding his bald head and occasionally adding a comment or two. He looked like hiking through the forest in a yellow and turquoise patterned coverall was an everyday occurrence for him, too. Since the Binians were a humanoid race that had actually evolved on the planet, naturally Raton wasn’t tormented by the climate like McCoy was. Even if the adult Binians averaged just five feet in height, even if most of the adults had a bald spot on top of their heads that should have been burned red by the shimmering sun, still they were far more suited for this scorching environment than humans.

That assessment didn’t include Vulcans. Resentfully, McCoy eyed the stiff figure of the _Enterprise’s_ first officer walking directly in front of him. Not only wasn’t Spock sweating at all, he hadn’t even bothered to don one of the short sleeved uniform tunics that the captain had authorized for this sweltering environment. He only seemed to be interested in the readings from the tricorder he held in his hand.

Every once in a while the first officer lifted the machine to record one of the forest birds in flight, or stooped to preserve the image of an unfamiliar bush growing along the well-packed dirt pathway on which they walked. Once he’d stopped abruptly when a little frog-like creature had hopped in front of him, and McCoy had almost fallen as he tried to prevent himself from touching the touch-me-not Vulcan. He’d caught himself just in time, flailing his arms wildly and feeling like a complete idiot. Spock had merely straightened and walked on, without even a glance behind him in McCoy’s direction.

McCoy looked down at the perspiration-soaked front of his lightweight tunic and delicately pulled it away from his sticky chest. They’d already hiked at least four kilometers from the aircar, though it seemed like more, and he was ready to stop. His feet and ankles were beginning to hurt, and the close air of the forest made it hard to breathe.

Behind him McCoy heard Hunyady humming a song, and knew without looking that she was holding the hands of two of the giggling children who had accompanied them. It sounded as if they were all actually enjoying this forced march. Wasn’t anybody else in this group even uncomfortable?

If only he had known the island nation of Bin on the planet of Shercata would be as hot as blazes, McCoy complained to himself as he trudged along, he wouldn’t have assigned himself as the medical liaison for the five days of negotiations. Paul M’Benga knew as much about the medical properties of the dep weed as he did, and at least the first officer of the _Enterprise_ was talking to him.

McCoy looked up at the blue sky visible through the branches of the towering trees. Scotty and the _Enterprise_ had warped out of orbit as soon as the landing party beamed down three days ago. Hot as it was, they were all stuck here until the ship returned.

McCoy’s nose wrinkled with disgust as the large trees among which they were walking thinned out. The path wound through another of the ubiquitous swamps that characterized any forest environment where the finicky dep weed condescended to grow. The noisome odor seemed to sear a path right through his throat and into his lungs, making it even more difficult to breathe.

The diminutive woman pointed towards five trees clustered together in the center of the murky water, their massive and exposed roots plummeting down into the moisture of the marsh. Each towered more than thirty meters into the air, while innocent-looking moss dangled from the topmost branches.

“This is the unharvested dep weed that is closest to the coast and our settlements, Captain Kirk, of the starship _Enterprise_.” Despite her tiny size, the woman had a rich contralto voice. “Now do you see why we don’t think we can meet your production estimates?”

Spock moved up to stand next to the captain. He held his tricorder at arm’s length over his head towards the moss. “If this is typical of the growing location,” his eyes squinted as he attempted to read the figures on the screen, “I would say the ecological problems you cited are valid. A wetlands environment is the most difficult to preserve during harvesting operations, and yet it is essential to maintain it so the dep weed will continue to grow.”

Raton joined the little group. “And this is the closest and most accessible of all the weed locations,” he lectured. Raton was the oldest male in Dlana’s politically powerful marriage, and he functioned much like a high-placed, self-important advisor to a prime minister. Despite his obvious affection for his clan leader and wife, he tended to be pompous. “The rest are much further inland, where the swamps are more dangerous and the forests almost impassable. We must work carefully clearing the forest for landing pads and equipment, and relocating the animal life. It will take months merely to set up the support systems.”

Kirk stroked his chin and nodded. “You’re right, of course. And those are just the problems you know about.”

Dlana agreed. “Yes. We’ve never ventured as far inland in our harvesting as this new contract with the Federation will require, and so it’s difficult to gauge what other problems we’ll encounter. Probably bintorrin will be the least of them.”

“Bintorrin?” Kirk queried.

“The really dangerous marshes are bintorrin,” she explained, “and they are hard to tell from the harmless swamps. One step in a bintorrin and the muck at the bottom will suck you down. It never lets you go. And the corrosive mud eats away at your skin, so you will die that way if it doesn’t suffocate you. It is very dangerous.”

Kirk looked about them. The marsh they were standing next to looked like every marshland he had seen on ten different planets: murky waters just a few feet deep, a few reed-like plants growing on the edges and in clumps in the mud. He could just make out small, fish-like creatures darting about in the clearer water closest to the surface.

He turned back to the Binians. “Let’s talk later about exactly how long you’ll need before production can begin,” he suggested. “You know the grustite in the dep weed is the only drug that can combat the spread of Fuller’s disease. We don’t want another epidemic like on Celsus V. Your dep weed could save millions, maybe billions of lives in the long run. If the only way to ensure a reliable quantity of the weed is to wait until the operation is set up to your satisfaction, then we wait.”

Dlana passed one finger across the bald spot on her head in her people’s gesture of approval. “Good. I’m glad you see the point.” She addressed the entire group. “Come, let us sit down and rest for a while before we return to the hovercraft.”

She led the way to a dry patch of ground elevated from the marshy waters of the swamp and sat back heavily against the trunk of a tree. She laced her fingers over her bulging belly and kicked off her shoes with a sigh.

Kirk watched the performance with a grin before seating himself next to her. He honestly liked Dlana, and the hours spent in her company the past few days had been enjoyable.

The Binians had to be the friendliest, most unself-conscious beings with whom he had ever dealt. Only three hours into their first session they had squirmed out of their chairs and onto the floor of the sun-filled atrium they called a negotiating room. They’d flopped onto cushions while the more formal representatives from the Federation stayed perched in furniture that was too small for them.

Next to go had been shoes. The people from the _Enterprise_ were the only ones who wore them in the huge, rambling beach house that was the communal home of the entire Meriti clan. Kirk understood the custom. With their climate and the white sands of the beach right next to their homes, why wear shoes? This was the first time Dlana had since that first morning session.

“How can you stand it?” she asked, nodding at the captain’s legs that were stretched out upon the ground. His feet were clad in proper Starfleet issue boots. Dlana used her toes to scratch the bottom of one dainty foot. “Don’t you feel like just kicking back and putting your feet up?”

Kirk shook his head. “Not as much as you must feel, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton,” he grinned and nodded at where her hands were laced over her abdomen. It wasn’t every assignment, he thought, where the chief negotiator was only two weeks from delivering her fourth child, and watching her fight her way out of a seated position was an open source of amusement for everyone involved, including herself.

Or where children were such an integral part of the society, and therefore of the negotiations. Kirk watched as a young boy and girl began to climb up one of the trees, using a long vine for leverage. Dlana watched the two of them too, a complacent smile on her face as she observed her second-born son and his cousin at play.

Kirk thought about the role of children in this society. Children here were both seen and heard. They were everywhere, and their care was the joint responsibility of every adult in the clan. Every clan “uncle” acted as a father figure; because of the group marriages, paternity was never acknowledged. And each female of the clan cared for any and all of the children as a mother. After three days of observing how this fluid relationship produced many happy, youthful faces, Kirk had not been at all surprised when children had accompanied them on their fact-finding trek into the forest.

Kirk’s thoughts were interrupted as he saw Dlana’s eyes fix on something behind him, and her face softened. Jamomi, Kirk guessed, the clan leader’s first-born son, for whom she harbored a special, open affection that was different from the way all the other children were treated. Kirk turned to see a thin boy walking towards them. Kirk guessed that he was seven or eight years old, although with the Binians’ small stature, it was difficult to tell for sure.

The youngster nodded hesitantly towards Kirk, then sidled up next to the clan leader. “Mother,” he almost whispered, speaking rapidly, “do you think that Commander Spock might want me to bring him some water? It’s been a long walk, and I’m pretty sure that all the people from the Federation drink....” The boy’s vice trailed off uncertainly.

Dlana smiled at her son and affectionately tousled his sandy hair, skimming over where the bald spot was just beginning to develop. “Slow down, son, slow down. And where are your manners? What will our visitor think of you?”

Jamomi ducked his head and managed to move out from under his mother’s solicitous patting. “I’m sorry, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton.” He turned towards Kirk. “Greetings, James Kirk...,” his clear blue eyes flicked towards his mother, seeking approval as he touched his left shoulder and cheek in the Binian gesture of greeting, “....captain of the starship _Enterprise_.”

“That’s much better,” Dlana murmured with an encouraging smile. “Now, perhaps Commander Spock might want some water. But don’t you think it would be a good idea to give the Commander some peace? You’ve been monopolizing all his free time, my dear. You know our visitors are of a different culture. He may not wish....”

“Nonsense,” Kirk interrupted her. “I’m sure Mister Spock would be delighted to talk with you, Jamomi.”

Dlana flashed Kirk a grateful smile and happily relented. “If you say so, Captain Kirk of the _Enterprise_.” She turned to her son. “You and the Commander have had so much to talk about, haven’t you? Go on, and make sure you get one of the new containers for him.”

Kirk watched as Jamomi ran towards where Raton was measuring out water. The wealthy Binians had imported the mugs from Regulas II solely for the comfort of their guests. But Kirk wasn’t interested in the latest technology that brought ice and cold drinks to a people that didn’t need them; he was fascinated by the unique relationship that had developed over the past three days between Spock and the boy.

Kirk examined Jamomi’s frail frame as Raton poured the water into the mug the boy was holding. It was obvious that Dlana loved Jamomi dearly, perhaps because he was so different from the other energetic children of the clan. Jamomi was pale where most Binians were bronzed, and thin, reed-fragile where most of his countrymen were stocky. His blue eyes had a pinched look about them, as if he remembered pain.

While all the other children seemed healthy and happy, none of them seemed to share the same type of relationship with any woman, even their birth mothers, as Jamomi did with Dlana. Jamomi had a sort of emotional neediness about him, and Dlana’s warm smile and welcoming arms seemed happy to fulfill that need in him. Kirk had the impression that the aberration was happily tolerated by the other adults because of Jamomi’s frailties, and because of the respect they held for the intelligent and efficient clan leader.

Now Jamomi carried a full mug of water to where Spock still stood under the trees with his tricorder. The boy walked carefully on spindly legs, anxious lest he fail in this self-appointed task.

“Commander Spock, son of... uh, first officer of the _Enterprise_ , would you like something to drink?” The little boy could not keep the hope from his high-pitched voice.

Spock shifted his attention to Jamomi. Even at this distance, Kirk could see how there was a subtle change in his lover’s demeanor; a softening of the expression on his face, and a relaxation of the stiff posture Spock often imposed upon himself when he was in the company of others.

“Yes, Jamomi, son of Dlana, water would be welcome.” Spock replaced the tricorder strap upon his shoulder, and went down on one knee so that he was almost at eye level with the child.

The open receptivity was so different from what Kirk would have expected of his lover. Spock was not merely avoiding giving offense, he was actively encouraging the growing relationship. And though it had been surprising to see Spock cross the central gathering hall in the evenings to engage Jamomi in conversation, to realize that the first officer actually enjoyed the long explanations sparked by the boy’s insatiable curiosity, Kirk did not begrudge this diversion of his lover’s attention from himself for a minute. Instead, it made him feel proud.

This was another one of the unexpected fruits of their intimate relationship, a gift he had not known he was giving and which he was unsure Spock knew he was accepting. Whatever transformations Spock had employed that allowed him to come to Kirk as a lover were working in other ways in his life too. How else explain this utterly atypical response to a child, to a stranger? In Kirk’s eyes it was wonderful. He wanted Spock to find as much happiness in life as he could.

Jamomi watched the science officer take a sip, then he gestured towards the tricorder. “Would you tell me about the information you gathered on our dep weed?”

Spock nodded. “Of course.” He settled on the ground, cross-legged, and Jamomi sat next to him, peering at the screen in the Vulcan’s lap.

Kirk had to smile as the two heads bent close together, and as Spock’s body curved protectively towards the boy. He was sure that it had never occurred to Jamomi that Spock might not like the way the boy leaned against him. And while Spock was perfectly capable of rebuffing a too-familiar approach from any being in the galaxy, he had allowed and even encouraged the innocent closeness from Jamomi.

Kirk was not the only one who had been watching the little scene. Dlana nodded towards the two. “I am so grateful for all the attention your Mister Spock has been giving to my son. He has been very patient with all of Jamomi’s questions.”

“No gratitude needed, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton,” Kirk said easily. He felt sure he was speaking for his friend. “Jamomi is a very intelligent child, and Commander Spock is the best teacher of young officers on the _Enterprise_. He’s treating your son like a slightly backwards Ensign.”

Dlana smiled. “Yes, I’ve noticed. Jamomi spent every available moment yesterday evening going over the article Mister Spock recommended from the VSA Journal, instead of playing with his cousins and brother and sisters. He is very interested in the theory behind the universal translator. What am I going to do with him?” Dlana was unable to hide the pride in her voice.

Kirk’s eyes widened. He hadn’t realized the boy was that precocious; no wonder Spock was so taken with him. He decided to answer the clan leader’s rhetorical question. “Turn him into a scientist. Looks like he’ll do it himself given half the chance.”

“Yes,” Dlana sighed unhappily, and looked down at her suddenly twisting hands. “Someday Jamomi will make a great discovery somewhere. I know it.”

Kirk stared at her quizzically, confused by the sudden unhappiness from the perpetually cheerful woman.

She looked back up at him, and it was obvious she was blinking back tears.

Kirk sought to fill the awkward silence. He gestured towards the other children now swinging on the vines. “Being with so many children is a pleasant change for us, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton. There aren’t any on the _Enterprise_. In human culture, children are kept separate; they don’t accompany adults everywhere.”

Gratefully the clan leader took up the conversational lifeline. “It is a holdover from before we colonized this island two hundred years ago. My ancestors lived across the sea in the harshest environment in all of Shercata. Children were so precious to us then, essential in the battle for survival. And yet, two out of three of them died of malnutrition, or from the wars we constantly fought against our neighbors for more fertile land. Is it any wonder that they are so important to us?”

“And yet,” Kirk pointed out quietly, the argument between his first officer and CMO vividly in his mind, “you expose them to danger, even now, in the Andoluse, your survival test that starts tomorrow.”

“Yes.” The woman turned away abruptly. “It is traditional for my people, especially for the ruling clan. Perhaps you would like to ask Raton for some water for yourself, Captain.”

A sudden chill replaced the easy rapport that existed between Dlana and himself, and Kirk cursed his impetuous question. He’d broken one of the basic rules of negotiators, indeed, the concept on which the Prime Directive itself was based. Never impugn the culture of any people. The whole disagreement between Spock and McCoy was really over McCoy’s inability to accept the decisions of either the Vulcans or the Binians; now it sounded as if Kirk were guilty of the same thing.

It was clear that Dlana was going to spend some time staring off into the distance, and so Kirk got up and wandered over to Raton. He nodded his thanks for the drink, then walked over to where McCoy was sitting on a tuft of grass, close to where Spock was still explaining tricorder readings to Jamomi.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” McCoy greeted him with a drawl. He nodded towards the two intent heads. “I never thought I’d live to see the day when Spock would be playing babysitter. He might not be talking to me, but he sure seems to be interested in that kid.”

Kirk crouched down on his haunches. “You two still not talking?” he queried, although he knew the answer.

McCoy shrugged. “Do you consider ‘Good morning, Doctor McCoy’ and ‘Good evening, Doctor McCoy’ talking? I don’t. He’s giving me the full treatment, blasted Vulcan. He won’t admit that everything I said that night is God’s honest truth.”

Kirk suppressed a frown. Both his friends were so damned stubborn. “From your perspective, Bones, not from his.”

The physician hunched a shoulder. “If you say so.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Kirk sipping at his water and wondering whether he should go back to Dlana and apologize. Finally, McCoy stirred and said, “I can’t wait for the _Enterprise_ to get back.”

“Heat getting to you, Bones?”

The physician wiped his brow. “Damn right. All this walking’s making my feet swell up, too.” He rubbed at an ankle encased in Starfleet imitation leather. “But I was thinking of that kid. I’d love to get him under my scanners and find out what’s wrong with him. Could be I could do something for him.”

“Don’t tell me you’re developing a soft spot, too, Bones.”

The physician smiled reluctantly. “Oh, heck, he’s a nice kid, Jim. Even if he does think our resident Vulcan is the be-all and end-all. So he’s got bad taste. I don’t blame him for that.”

Again Kirk resisted the impulse to frown. This disagreement had to be resolved. Lives had been lost on other starfleet vessels because two officers were at odds, and Kirk was determined that there wouldn’t ever be the chance of that happening on his ship.

He had always thought there was an undercurrent of affection between Bones and the first officer, present yet ever unstated, even through their many disagreements. Now that subtle feeling had disappeared. The attitude between them was more than frosty, it was downright hostile, and Kirk felt very uncomfortable caught between them. Could he have been so wrong to say in the meld that McCoy loved Spock? Would Spock ever trust McCoy again so that he would willingly join Kirk in telling the physician about their intimate relationship?

McCoy took a deep breath. “This heat is sure tiring me out,” he muttered.

The comment sparked a thought in Kirk’s mind, but as quickly as it flared it dissipated into darkness again. Before he could reconstruct it he was distracted by an excited voice.”

“I think I understand it now, Commander Spock, first officer of the _Enterprise_.” Pride was clearly visible on the pinched features as Jamomi looked up at his tutor.

Spock nodded and resettled the tricorder strap around his shoulder. “The basic principle of scanning was postulated many years before technology was able to put it into practice. The concept is simple; the implementation is not.”

“But I won’t forget it. I’ll enter what you taught me today in my computer.” The boy looked over at where his mother and Raton were in quiet conversation. “I wish there was somebody else in the clan who understood these things, and could teach me. Nobody else seems to be interested in what I want to know. And the computer tapes we have don’t go into enough detail.”

“I am pleased that I have been of some help, Jamomi, son of Dlana.” Kirk, unabashedly eavesdropping, noticed that Spock as always used the correct form of address. “If you would like,” Spock offered, “I can ask your birth mother if I may supply you with copies of several instructional tapes from the _Enterprise_.”

The boy’s cornflower blue eyes widened, and he took a deep excited breath. “That would be great!” he almost shouted. “Please, ask her tonight at the Andoluse gathering after dinner. I know Dlana will say yes. She always lets me study when I want to. She even helps me figure out things that are confusing.” Jamomi subsided, the broad smile on his narrow face emphasizing his differences. “She’s really terrific. The best birth mother in the clan. Did your mother help you when you were a boy, Commander Spock of the _Enterprise_? Is that why you’re such a good scientist?”

Spock paused before he answered. Jamomi probably didn’t notice, but Kirk did. He wondered how Spock would gently divert the boy away from prying questions the Vulcan would never answer.

But Spock did answer. His voice was quiet, but it carried clearly across the clearing. “No, Jamomi, son of Dlana. My mother is not well versed in the sciences. My father provided minimal assistance outside the classroom.”

Jamomi frowned. “Your father? I don’t really understand that. Dlana reminded me just today that you have a different culture from us. Didn’t you have a birth mother, and then several family uncles? How did you know who your birth father was? Was everybody tested?”

Next to him, Kirk heard McCoy stir, the ice in his mug tinkling as he drank, but Kirk couldn’t tear his own eyes away from the deceptively simple tableau. Was it possible that Bones was missing the significance of these revelations?

Again a pause. Again that strong, deep voice, the voice that when raised in passion could thrill straight through to the center of Kirk’s soul. “Family structure differs throughout the Federation. On my planet the family includes only one adult male and one adult female, not many adults as yours does.”

Jamomi thought about that for a moment. “I see. Here I am called the son of Dlana; we do not know which of my many family uncles is my biological father. On Vulcan, you would be called Spock, son of....” He looked up with the question.

“Sarek,” Spock supplied in a low voice.

“Sarek,” Jamomi repeated, considering. “That’s a nice name. And what is your father’s name?”

“That is my father’s name,” Spock said stiffly, folding his hands in his lap and staring down at them. “My mother’s name is Amanda. We trace our lineage paternally. On formal occasions, I am called Spock, son of Sarek.”

“Really?” the boy asked in awe, planting both elbows on his knees and gazing at the bowed head. With the single-mindedness of youth, he was oblivious to Spock’s discomfort. “That’s really different.” Then his pale brow furrowed in thought. “But if you know both your birth mother and father, why not be called son of both? Why not ‘Spock, son of Sarek and son of Amanda’? It doesn’t make sense.”

Spock looked up, and gifted the boy with one of the rare softenings of his expression that was almost a smile and almost a heart-rending portrait of despair. “Indeed, Jamomi, son of Dlana. You will find as you grow older that there are many things that do not make sense.”

The boy shrugged and picked up a leaf from where it had blown down from the treetops. He began to shred it with quick nervous movements, his eyes fastened on his plucking fingers. “I don’t have to grow older to know that; I already know it. I’ve know it all my life. The others get to swim even in the rough surf, and I’m not strong enough. The others never have to stay in bed and take medicine for weeks. They don’t understand why I like to read all the time, and study.” He looked up at the Vulcan, his face an open book, all his childish determination showing in his eyes. “But I’m older now. I haven’t been sick in months. It will be different soon. I’m going to make it make sense.”

Spock looked at him quizzically, his eyebrow arching into question with the fierce declaration uttered by such an insubstantial being. But before he could express the vague disquiet he felt, Jamomi was off and running to the side of the clearing.

“Watch me!” he shouted over his shoulder.

He grabbed a hanging vine from the same tree that his brother had climbed earlier, and hoisted himself up with his hands, laughing in delight, happy to be showing off.

The other two children, smaller and younger than he, had been able to climb halfway up the tree, hand over hand, but it was quickly obvious that Jamomi did not have the same strength in his arms and shoulders. He braced himself with his legs against the trunk and readjusted his hold on the vine. He took a deep breath. The swell of his narrow chest was visible even across the clearing. He looked up at the branch from which the vine dangled, a good fifteen meters over his head, and struggled upwards. There was a set, determined look on his face.

Kirk looked up at him with concern. He didn’t want to spoil what must be meant as an exhibition for Spock, but Jamomi looked awfully shaky hanging so far from the ground. Kirk glanced at Spock, saw that his friend was frowning. They both slowly got to their feet, their eyes riveted on the boy who was no longer laughing.

By now Dlana had noticed what her son was doing. She walked over to the tree and called up anxiously, “Jamomi, my son, come down from there at once.”

At least Jamomi stopped climbing. “No,” he said stubbornly. He was gasping for breath. “I don’t want to.”

Dlana placed both hands over the curve of her unborn child. “Young man, if you don’t....”

Jamomi’s right hand suddenly slipped off the vine. He gave a little shriek that filled the clearing, and dangled precariously from one hand.

“Look out,” McCoy bellowed to Dlana, “he’ll hurt you if he falls on you!”

The physician ran towards the clan leader as Jamomi lost his hold and went plummeting downwards. He snatched Dlana out of the way just as Spock arrived under the tree to catch the falling child.

Jamomi looked shaken but was unhurt as Spock gently set him on his feet. McCoy held Dlana at arm’s length.

“You could have really hurt your baby, Dlana,” McCoy scolded.

“I was hoping to save my son from injury, Doctor McCoy, physician of the _Enterprise_ ,” Dlana said with dignity.

McCoy threw an angry glance towards Spock. “Oh, you shouldn’t have worried. Mister Spock here makes a career out of rescuing people. Jamomi was never in any danger.” He pulled out the medical tricorder without which he never traveled. “Now, let’s check you two over.”

The walk back to the aircar was quiet. Dlana didn’t seem to be in the mood for talking, Bones was red-faced from the heat, and Spock’s head was bent towards the little boy walking so trustingly by his side. Kirk concentrated on the few details remaining in the negotiations, and wondered how quickly they could leave after the Andoluse was over.

 

 

_Vulcan bondmates never argued. They very rarely disagreed. The union of minds and compatibility of spirit that bonding produced created a state of harmony between two beings that was never interrupted by raised voices or meaningful silences. Bondmates reflected the unity of Vulcan society following the precepts of Surak._

_So nine-year-old Spock believed._

_The whisper of wind that had traveled from the L-langon mountains arrived at the garden door of the dwelling shared by Spock and his parents just after the evening meal. It stirred the leaves of the earth plant Amanda had transplanted yesterday; the leaves made an unfamiliar, alien chittering as they rubbed together._

_Spock sat down on the bench immediately to the right of the doorway, straightening his legs out before him in precise motions. He carefully folded his hands in his lap as he leaned against the cool stone wall. He stared up at the huge green glow of T’Khut and listened._

_Inside, his parents were arguing again._

_Amanda was before the cleansing facility. “He’s old enough. He’s responsible enough. It would give him such pleasure.”_

_There was the sound of heavy footsteps walking across the room, and a scraping that told of a large platter being placed on the counter. “As you are well aware, the concept of pleasure cannot be entered into the plan we follow for our son’s upbringing, Amanda. It is not appropriate at this time to expand his lessons on astronomy.”_

_Spock could not control the accelerating beat of his heart in his side. Could they be speaking of..._

_A rattle and a bump as Spock’s mother opened the door of the recycling unit. Her voice was muffled as she bent over it. “If a child shows specific interest in a subject that is not harmful, it’s up to any adult, and especially his parents, to encourage that interest. Spock is very gifted, Sarek.”_

_Outside in the garden Spock held himself perfectly still. He glared at the noisy leaves waving in the breeze._

_“I am well aware of that, Amanda. He will make a worthy contribution to society when he is grown.”_

_“I’m not interested in ‘when he’s grown.’ I’m concerned about him now. Have you walked with him in the evenings lately?”_

_“You are aware that my duties at the embassy have precluded much contact between us for the past four months. I am hopeful that negotiations will be concluded in another ten days. At that time, I will resume my regular contact with our son.”_

_Spock blinked. It would be pleasing, and to his educational advantage, to have Sarek rejoin the household in a more normal routine._

_Amanda sighed, and Spock could imagine that she was using the coarse cloth that hung next to the refrigeration unit to wipe her hands. Illogically, she preferred it over the convenient sonics unit set in the wall. “I’ve walked with him. The other night, when T’Khut hadn’t risen yet, the stars were spread out across the sky. We sat by the low wall at the end of the garden and he asked the most intelligent questions. He is very interested in the stars, Sarek. As a teacher, I want to encourage that interest. As his mother, I believe that providing him with a telescope will make him....”_

_Spock tensed. He suspected what his mother was about to say. Had she never studied Surak’s precepts?_

_Amanda continued smoothly. “...will enhance his sense of self-esteem. From my viewpoint, it would be very logical.”_

_Sarek’s footsteps sounded again as he walked back across the room. There was a swish-swish sound as he used sand to clean the surface of their dining table. “It would also enhance the isolation in which our son already spends too much time, my wife. Studying the stars is not an activity that leads to contact with society, or others of Spock’s age.”_

_Again, Amanda’s sigh. She was much given to this emotional display. “I know. I’ve thought of that. But Spock will never be a... a gregarious person, Sarek. It isn’t in his nature. We can’t force him to be what he isn’t.”_

_“Indeed. I agree with that portion of your assessment. However, I still do not accede to his need for a telescope. When he is ten, I will take him with me on my next assignment off-world. He will see the stars from a closer perspective at that time.”_

_There was a whoosh as someone in the kitchen activated the recycling unit. “I disagree. That’s not what he needs. I think....” Their voices faded as they walked into the next room._

_Spock looked up at the sky, fighting to settle upon one question of the many in his mind. How had Amanda perceived his interest, and known it to be different from any of the other myriad subjects of which they spoke? How had she known of his unstated desire? He had thought it well hidden._

_Perhaps the answer lay in a flaw within himself. He was still imperfect in the controls Sarek had so patiently taught him. Had he become overly emotional in his questioning three nights ago? It had been frustrating, these past four months, not having Sarek available to answer his queries about scientific matters, and so Spock had turned to Amanda despite her lack of knowledge. She was no scientist, her answers had been barely adequate. Spock had wondered at the educational system on Earth._

_However, on greater reflection, perhaps it was fortunate that it was Amanda with him that night. Sarek would have undoubtedly rebuked him for an excessive emotional display. How else could Amanda, so inept in interpreting Vulcan expression, have learned of the secret longing he harbored, unless he had allowed it to show plainly in his voice and on his face? Sarek would not have approved._

_Uncomfortable with this image of himself, unrestrained, Spock swallowed to contain his embarrassment. He looked down at the sandy soil._

_When he was ten, Sarek had said, Spock could travel off-world. Would it not be logical to wait until that time to satisfy this burning desire he had to learn more of the vast darkness between worlds? Sarek was undoubtedly correct, it was illogical to interrupt his study plan with additional information that was not needed at this time. Spock’s mathematical studies were already challenging; much to his shame, probability theory was proving to be difficult. And his memorization of the Texts of T’Nir was still incomplete._

_No, it was illogical to spend additional time examining the spectral properties of stellar bodies, or attempting to track the gravitational influence of unseen planets upon their suns. Sarek was correct._

_The nine year old boy wished that his mother would not argue so. It was so undignified. So unVulcan._

_Spock stood, and took one last look at the sky. The glowing bulk of the Sister obscured all but the brightest celestial objects on the horizon. He had no interest in planets that were merely other members of Eridani’s celestial family. His eyes longed to range much further into the darkness than that. It was now the appropriate time for him to return to his room and resume his studies._

_The next day, Spock did not return his mother’s smile as she handed him his first telescope._

 

 

The Binians gathered in their central meeting hall every evening after dinner. Tonight the event was especially festive in anticipation of the Andoluse the next day. Bright banners of turquoise and yellow hung from the rafters and decorated the walls; although they swished over the head of the average Binian, the Federation representatives had to walk around the fringed edges. The windows in the upper half of the walls were open to the last dying light of the sun, and the sound of the ocean eternally breaking upon the sand could just barely be heard over the chatter of their hosts.

The gregarious Binians loved a party, and tonight gave ample evidence. Kirk walked over to a table set up in one corner of the room and helped himself to a fermented beverage he had come to like. Bones had presented him with a distracted smile when Kirk had pronounced that the drink tasted like beer and apricots. He shrugged and held the golden liquid up to the light; he still liked it.

He sipped his drink and looked around the room. Everywhere were knots of the little people engaged in light-hearted discussion; the congenial Binians never seemed to tire of conversation. It looked like the entire clan had turned out for the evening; there must have been at least two hundred people in the hall.

Nevertheless, Kirk had no trouble spotting the tall auburn-haired Ensign Hunyady smiling and speaking with Dlana. Kirk was well aware of the ensign’s efficiency. Despite her casual appearance, he didn’t doubt that he’d get a report of the conversation tomorrow morning.

In the center of the room there were several young Binians dancing enthusiastically. These were older youngsters who had already passed their test of maturity, and the dance was intended, so Kirk had been told, as an encouragement for the younger ones who would face the wild tomorrow. Every few minutes one of the adolescents would dash off for a younger child, link arms with them, and pull them into the dancing circle. Older child, younger one, older, younger, the order produced a tall, short, tall, short pattern to the circle that was complemented by the up and down motions of the dance. Kirk found it... he stopped before he said ‘fascinating’ to himself. He laughed into his drink.

That reminded him to look for his lover. In one corner Spock sat with his ever-present shadow. The boy appeared to be showing his mentor how to play one of the Binian stringed instruments, despite the blare of music that already resounded through the room. The little boy’s features were tight with intensity, the expression oh-so-solemn. Kirk chuckled to himself. Spock could play any stringed instrument in the galaxy, but he was obviously humoring the child.

At that moment the first officer looked up from Jamomi and unerringly locked gazes with his captain across the room. That seemed to be something that the two of them had always been able to do, pick each other out from a crowd, and since their love affair began it was happening more and more frequently. Kirk smiled across the hustle and bustle that separated them, and thought he detected a slight softening of the austere expression. There was an invitation there, too.

He began to walk across the hall towards Spock and Jamomi, stopping to talk with whomever greeted him, so that by the time he arrived he found that Dlana had just come up to the first officer. He held back and listened just outside the orbit of their conversation.

“Commander Spock, first officer of the _Enterprise_ , how are you this evening?” Dlana asked brightly, and made the gestures of greeting, touching first her left shoulder and then her left cheek with the thumb of her right hand. Jamomi carefully placed the harp-like instrument he had been holding on a nearby table and stood up next to her. Lovingly, Dlana curled an arm about his shoulders.

Tonight Dlana was wearing a patchwork gown that trailed the floor and obscured her pregnancy; her diminutive figure looked even more insubstantial next to the tall Vulcan. Her white-blonde hair was pulled back and fastened high on the back of her head. Kirk didn’t think the style was very attractive, since it accented the bald spot on top, making it seem larger.

“Greetings, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton, I am well, as I hope you are,” Spock said gravely, copying her movements with fluid grace.

“Oh, yes.” Her hand curved to cup her belly. The Binians in their artlessness were totally oblivious to Spock’s discomfort with such gestures. “We’re not ready yet.”

Jamomi tugged at her arm and whispered in her ear, then she smiled at Spock. “Jamomi says you have something to ask me.”

The clan leader willingly agreed to allow her son to receive the educational tapes from the _Enterprise_. The boy wrapped his arms about his mother’s bulk as best he could, emitted a muffled “thank you” into the folds of her dress and darted away.

Dlana watched him go, her smile softening. She turned back to find the Vulcan’s gaze resting on her curiously.

“What is it?” she asked simply, in her people’s direct manner.

Spock looked down, clearly uncomfortable at being caught, but Kirk observed that his friend made no effort to escape the question.

He gestured towards where Jamomi had disappeared into the crowd. “You... do not mind that his studies will be interrupted with this new material?”

“Mind?” the woman queried. “No, of course not. He’s so interested in science of all kinds. I’m just so grateful that you’ve been kind to him, Commander Spock, first officer of the _Enterprise_. You’ve made him very happy. That hasn’t happened very often to my son.”

Spock straightened and folded his arms over his chest, as if to shrug off the emotional responsibility she had just placed upon his shoulders. “Jamomi is... gifted, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton.”

“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” she beamed.

“And yet if you encourage him to broaden his studies, there will inevitably come a time when Jamomi will be required to leave this planet. You do not have the necessary educational facilities here. Does not this possibility... disturb you? I am aware of your people’s feelings towards family and clan.”

Dlana’s smile faded, much as it had that afternoon when Kirk had asked her about the Andoluse. “Yes,” she said, and turned towards an open window to where the restless waves drove upon the sand. “That’s a sadness that I’ve already anticipated. Maybe, because it will be spread out over the years, it won’t hurt so much when he has to leave.” She looked back up at Spock. “If only you could have seen him before, you’d understand my attitude. So often he was too sick to even read, and even now, he’s always struggling to keep up with the other children as they play. You saw that this afternoon. He never had a place. But now we’ve found what he can do and wants to do. He’s found a place, and I think it’s wonderful.”

“We?” Spock questioned. “You guided Jamomi towards academics?”

She laughed up at him. “That would be he who has no teeth trying to catch the tagmorish! No,” she shook her head, the pony tail behind swinging back and forth with her vehemence, “we spent much time together while he was recuperating from his last bout with pneumonia a few years ago. The other women in our clan understood. I needed to be with him. I... was desperate to somehow give him a normal life, at least some semblance of it. I wanted to find something to give him a spark, a... reason to go on. Something he could call his own besides a sick bed and his medicines. Do you know what I mean?”

Spock’s dark eyes looked down into her clear blue ones, a strong male looking into a maternal strength that was fathomless, deeper than oceans. The blue eyes looked familiar, he had seen that color, the fortitude behind it before.... “I believe that I do. Perhaps. Please, continue.”

Dlana shrugged. “There isn’t much more to say. There was such a glow about him whenever he was studying, especially science. I read it in his eyes, and started bringing him as many book tapes as I could. The rest he’s done on his own. I’m very fortunate, don’t you think, to see the happiness growing, knowing I can add to it? Next to that, my own selfish desire to keep him here on Shercata seems very petty. I’m his mother. Studying fulfills him. It makes him happy. I know that you and I come from different cultures, but surely we can’t be that different. Do you understand when I say that no mother could ask for more for her child?”

Spock blinked before her impassioned question, once, twice. “I do not know,” he said quietly. “I have not given much thought to the motivations behind parenthood. However, I intend to do so. I am pleased that you have provided me with additional data.”

Dlana sighed, suddenly pensive. Her hands twisted together atop her belly. “And I’ll be pleased when the next few days are over. I know he’s relatively healthy now, I know it’s traditional for our family to prove that our children are worthy, but still....”

She looked across the room, towards where the children were dancing. Kirk noticed that Jamomi had joined the group that was bobbing up and down in time to the music. The boy was by far the smallest child dancing. Kirk frowned. Had he misunderstood what the dance was for?

Spock had also followed the clan leader’s gaze. “About what are you worried?” he asked urgently.

“The Andoluse, of course. You know it starts tomorrow.”

Spock’s gaze flew to lock with his equally startled captain’s. Kirk moved swiftly forward to stand next to his first officer, abandoning all pretense of disinterest in the conversation. He looked as appalled as Spock felt. McCoy emerged from one of the doors to the deck, his hair windblown. The physician looked over towards them, noticed the intensity present, and hastened to stand with his crewmates.

Spock ignored the doctor’s presence and took one anxious step towards the clan leader. “But surely Jamomi cannot participate. He is not old enough....”

Dlana smiled at all three of them sadly. “I wish that were true. But my son turned ten four months ago, and almost every other ten-year-old in this house and the other clan houses up and down the beach will be in the swamps tomorrow.”

A disbelieving “What?” came from McCoy, but Kirk put a restraining hand on his friend’s arm. Instead Kirk spread his other hand out in an effort towards a reasonable comment, and forestalled what he knew would be McCoy’s excessively emotional reaction. He had to think of the negotiations, and of the drug that would help millions of beings, before he could afford to alienate Dlana. “But he’s not a healthy child, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton, you said so yourself.”

She shook her head. “He hasn’t been confined to bed in eighteen months. He’s so much better than he used to be. He’s just not as... energetic as I’d like to see him.”

McCoy shook off Kirk’s hold and said roughly, “Not energetic! Woman, that child belongs in my sickbay, not in some blasted competition where he’s likely to be killed!”

Dlana shuddered once and her right hand fluttered in the air, her race’s gesture of denial. She stared down at the patterned tile of the floor.

Spock took another step forward; he was so close to the short woman that when she looked up she had to crane her neck to see his face. “Is it absolutely imperative that he participate?” he asked, slowly enunciating each word. Kirk thought that he had rarely seen his lover look so dangerously intent.

Dlana answered abruptly. “Yes! Yes!” she said, each word a little cry meant to convince herself as well as those listening to her. Her hands came up to curl in a protective gesture over the life within her, her fingers dug into the fabric of the dress. She continued to stare up at Spock, ignoring Kirk and McCoy to direct all the passion of her explanation to the Vulcan who had been kind to her son.

“There’s never been a member of the Meriti clan who hasn’t. Never! The other clans, yes, but not ours. It would break the tradition. We’re one of Bin’s ruling clans. It’s traditional that our children....”

“But not required. Not essential.” The deep voice was thick with feeling.

Both hands gestured denial this time, and the woman’s eyes flashed with fervor. “Would you take this away from him? Deny him this as well as all the other things he has been denied in his short life? Only his excitement over meeting you has eclipsed his excitement over the Andoluse. This is his chance to be like the rest of the children. Don’t you understand?”

The emotions that crossed the Vulcan’s usually impassive face were obvious for anyone to see, as Spock’s newborn feelings warred with his logic, warred too with Dlana’s feelings that had nourished her son through illness and pain. The two sets of eyes stayed locked for long, long moments, blue staring into brown, the love of years challenging a newly-lit but confused soul that was awash with memories of its own.

Spock took a deep breath, and his gaze dropped to the floor. “Of course. I do understand. Jamomi’s participation in the Andoluse is... necessary.”

Dlana’s voice became as soft as Spock’s had been. “Yes,” she said, as if in consolation to a child, “yes, I think it is.” Her hand went out, as if to touch the first officer on the arm, but then she hesitated and glanced over at a fuming McCoy and the silent captain. Her arm dropped to her side.

“I appreciate your concern. We can only hope....” She bit her lower lip, then was gone in a swirl of skirts.

Kirk stared after her. The music in the room now seemed too loud, discordant, and the lights too bright. He was genuinely worried about Jamomi, but that worry was overlaid with his concern over what all of this might mean to Spock. His lover was still trying to sort out his own feelings over a boyhood ceremony that was so similar to the one that confronted them now. Spock had mentioned that a Vulcan boy he’d known had died in a Kahs-Wan, and the memory had seemed to make him sad. Had that boy been a friend? One of few?

Now, for the first time since Kirk had known him, Spock was finding some sort of a relationship with a child, was showing a soft patience and affection that had previously been beyond him. If Jamomi didn’t come back, how much would it hurt the being who was just beginning to expose his sensitive soul to others? How far would the boy’s death drive Spock back to what he had been before?

Under other circumstances, Captain James Kirk, leader of a Federation negotiating team on a planet with a culture different than his own, might have kept his silence. But now....

McCoy beat him to a comment. “This is exactly what I said was going to happen,” the physician spat out bitterly. “These ghoddamned rituals that send children out into danger. What kind of logic is there in letting that little boy die? What kind of sense does that make? Dlana is out of her mind.”

Kirk addressed his silent first officer. “Spock, I agree with McCoy. You know I respect the culture of the Binians, but I can’t stand by and just watch them send that child to his death. We’ve got to do something. The boy thinks the world of you, you can....”

Spock turned away from his captain’s plea and stared out through an open window, towards the darkness of the sea. “Do not ask me, Captain,” he commanded harshly. “My interference would be an unwarranted display of disrespect for the culture of this society.” His hands tightened into fists behind his back. “How dare I interpose my own opinion over that of his mother?”

“Because you care about the kid, that’s why,” McCoy said hotly.

Kirk addressed Spock’s rigid back. “Bones is right. That gives you the right. You know Jamomi’s chances of living through that survival test aren’t good. You saw what happened in the forest this afternoon. He just doesn’t have the strength, no matter how smart he is. Dlana is deceiving herself. She’s so anxious for Jamomi to fit in that she’ll let him go over her own good judgment.”

Spock turned to survey his captain dispassionately. “And what of our own good judgment? What of the negotiations for the dep weed? Are you willing to anger Dlana by interfering in local customs, and possibly jeopardize the well-being of millions of people who require the drug? I am not.”

Kirk matched his first officer’s stare for a moment, then he looked away and ran a hand through his hair. “Damnit. No. Of course not. We can’t do that. But there’s got to be another way....”

McCoy entreated, “But we don’t have to deal with Dlana. You just need to talk to the boy, Spock. He thinks you walk on water. Tell him it isn’t logical, that you don’t want him to go. He’ll listen to you.”

Spock had himself well under control. “Subterfuge, Doctor? That is beneath you. I have not experienced success with evasions of that sort. Tell the child and you have told the mother, and the success of the mission is again at risk.”

“Ghoddamn it, Spock!” McCoy was as outraged by Spock’s calm as he was by his words. The physician’s face was again flushed in his anger and the heat of the room. “If you don’t do anything, it’s as good as being an accessory to murder. Is that what your vaunted logic and respect for others has led you to? Child killer?”

“Bones, that’s enough,” Kirk snapped.

McCoy stepped back, breathing heavily, but he didn’t stop staring at Spock. The Vulcan’s expression was a hardened mask as he turned away and looked towards where the children were still dancing.

Kirk took a deep breath, then spoke in his command mode. “All right. Doctor McCoy, I understand your concern for Jamomi. I share it. But Spock is right too, we can’t jeopardize the mission for the dep weed. We’ve spoken to Dlana, she knows how we feel. We can’t do anything more.”

McCoy stared at him, incredulous. “But she thinks Spock agrees with her, that the boy should go. If he would only try again, I think there’s a good chance Dlana would listen to him and change her mind. Ghod alone knows why, but for some reason Spock carries some weight around here.”

Kirk eyed his silent first officer, then spoke exclusively to McCoy. “I can’t order that, Bones, and you know it.”

The physician bristled angrily. “Well, if you two don’t care enough about that little one, I do. I’ll find Dlana and see what I can do.”

He looked about the room, searching for the clan leader, but before he could move Kirk grabbed his arm. “Don’t, Bones. That’s an order.” The captain’s voice softened. “Nothing you can say would make any difference now anyway.”

McCoy shrugged off his captain’s hold. “Right,” he said bitterly, “I’m not the one with the influence. The only one who could make a difference is old Spock there.” Abruptly he went straight up to the Vulcan and stood only inches from his shuttered face, trying to make eye contact but failing. Frustrated, McCoy said, “And you’re not going to say a word, are you? You have too damn much respect for their traditions. Well, I only hope that little boy comes back. I don’t think he will, but miracles happen.”

For the second time in a week, Spock actually flinched from McCoy’s words. Apparently satisfied with that success, the red-faced physician turned and stomped off into the crowd.

Kirk watched him go with troubled eyes, seeing McCoy take a determined path through the crowd to the broad stairway. It led up to the dozens of bedrooms that lined the second floor hallways. At least Bones wasn’t going to violate his order and seek out the clan leader.

Then Spock was at his elbow. “I wish to speak with Raton concerning the production estimates we discussed this afternoon.” He didn’t look at Kirk as he left to seek shelter in duty.

Amid the happy swirl of Binian conversation, Kirk was left alone.  
   
CHAPTER THREE

Kirk slid onto the low Binian version of a bed, and directly onto the warm body of his lover. The pale pink silken sheet drifted to one side of the mattress; shafts of moonlight fell through the open window, softening the muscled contours of male bodies. The sound of the surf, ubiquitous, eternally kissing the sand, drifted through with a faint sigh of wind.

Kirk folded his hands over Spock’s chest, and rested his head upon his interlaced fingers. He squirmed a little, trying to find the exact position that would keep him balanced on his perch, being careful with the way his slack genitals moved against Spock’s equally flaccid groin.

He wondered if he were doing the right thing. He and Spock hadn’t slept together since beaming down from the _Enterprise_ ; neither had thought that it was the appropriate thing to do. But seeing the confusion, the utter sadness in Spock’s eyes had firmed Kirk’s resolve: he wouldn’t leave Spock alone tonight. And so he had softly knocked on the door of the Vulcan’s assigned room, a tube of lubricant stashed in his boot. He didn’t know what Spock would want tonight, conversation, sex, maybe the simple contact of holding one another in the dark, but despite his own weariness after the emotional events of the day, Kirk was prepared to do what he could for the being he loved. Even if Spock denied it, Kirk thought that his lover needed him.

For a few minutes they just lay quietly together, Kirk rocking gently with the rise and fall of gentle respirations. He wished that he knew what was going through his lover’s mind. There was such a haunted look on Spock’s face even now, and Kirk knew that his understanding of what Spock was feeling was incomplete.

Finally, Spock’s fingers raised to tangle in his lover’s hair. Hoarsely, he said, “I am pleased that you are here.”

“Me, too,” Kirk whispered, and he leaned forward for a gentle kiss.

But their pressing of lips did not stay gentle for long. Spock made a little sound, needy and urgent in the back of his throat. His strong arms tightened about Kirk’s back, almost hurting. He opened his mouth, demanding contact, and suddenly the innocent kiss was passionate.

Kirk willingly went along with the tide of Spock’s urgency; his lover so seldom showed what he wanted or needed through physical means. They kissed desperately, their breaths sounding harsh in the quiet air, and Spock’s hands slid down the length of Kirk’s back to tighten about his lover’s waist. In an instant he rolled Kirk over on the bed, so that now Spock was covering the cool body. He looked down at Kirk from stiffened arms.

Kirk recognized the unhappiness that sexual arousal could not hide, and he felt a sinking sensation go through the pit of his stomach. Compassionately, he lifted one hand to caress the side of Spock’s face, listening to the panting, watching the fine nostrils flare with each desperate inhalation.

“Let’s meld,” Kirk whispered. “Show me what’s in your mind. Let’s share this.” They were words they had said to each other before, always accepted with love and openness, each of them knowing that if their relationship foundered, it would do so because of lack of communication. Kirk knew Spock would lean forward and agree, and maybe this time the rain and sand from their last meld would finally fall....

“No.” It was a strangled groan. Spock shook his head. “I am unwilling to expose you to my confusion.” He did not want Jim to see him, his mental and most essential self, in this uncontrolled, very un-Vulcan state. Spock’s pride flared along with the denial.

“Yes,” Kirk insisted, and his fingers pressed against the warm dryness of skin. “I’m not unwilling.”

Spock’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “But I am,” he adamantly maintained. “Jim, there is no need. I have explained this to you before.”

Kirk’s hand dropped to rest on the point of one narrow shoulder. He shook his head, trying to hide how profoundly disturbed he was at this new denial. How much of Spock’s life was he going to be allowed to share? Would his lover spend the years rationing out the moments? What was Kirk to do with his desire to share simply because he loved?

Foreboding settled in Kirk’s soul. He couldn’t live like this, knowing Spock guarded so much of himself. His impatient nature asserted itself, along with a tendril of irritation over Spock’s obtuse stubbornness. How could such an intelligent being not see the obvious truth? This was important.

He took a deep breath, deliberately loosening the grip on Spock’s shoulder that had tightened during his disturbing ruminations. “There is a need. Why can’t you see it? This has to do with Jamomi, yes, all I really want to do is share your unhappiness and pain over that boy, to lessen it if I can. I want to help, but you’ve tied my hands. All of what you’re feeling about Jamomi is linked to your reaction to your own childhood somehow, and I don’t know anything about that. Please, Spock, let me in. Remember our last meld? Jamomi is another one of the clouds on the horizon. Let it rain inside you, Spock, let the sandstorm blow. Tell me how you feel,” Kirk’s voice was so insistent it was almost a hiss, “share with me. Let me help you through it. Let me in.”

For a moment, Spock’s resolution wavered. He heard the love and support behind Kirk’s words, and a part of him wanted to do exactly what Kirk said. End this useless struggle and give himself up to the meld, lose himself to the brightness and the light. Share his confusion and distress over Jamomi and all the other images from his past that this unfortunate planet had conjured up for him.

But another part of Spock rebelled at the image of his own weakness, of himself helplessly collapsing into another’s arms and mind, even the one he loved. The understanding in the beloved voice also inflamed. Is this what Jim wanted, denial of his own judgment? Spock simply wasn’t ready for what Kirk asked of him. Did Kirk require surrender, upon their bed and within their minds? All the changes that Spock had already initiated to make their love possible, were they not enough?

And even if Spock gave in to the meld, there would be no joy there, not for him, for in his growing indignation he could only imagine that Kirk would relentlessly search out his scattered emotions, bore into his psyche to shed light on memories denied long ago. Kirk wanted to join not for love, but for reformation!

Loss mixed with bitterness flooded Spock’s mind. He had felt such comfort when Jim had entered his room with that warm light in his eyes. All Spock had wanted to do was feel the cool arms about him, take consolation from closeness, perhaps from a physical pleasure that was a primitive denial of death in all its forms. He should have known it was not to be. How could he have been so naive?

Anger stirred, and Spock’s eyebrows contracted as he looked down at the expectant, open form of his lover. Kirk returned the look, but Spock refused to read the love and concern that was in the hazel eyes. It was easier to ride the tide of his own emotion. Kirk thought he would give in. Jim thought that he could sweep all Spock’s objections away with his insistent words.

Restlessly, Spock moved his lower body against his lover’s, and was surprised by the surge of physical sensation that coursed through him. His arousal had grown with his emotions, so that now his fully-erect penis pressed against the springiness of curly brown pubic hair.

Abruptly, with a growl that abandoned all the confusing emotions swirling within him, Spock dropped full length upon the cool body. He gave himself up to the physical. He buried his face in the folds of Kirk’s neck, and breathed in deeply of that inflaming scent. Spock began to kiss his way down the sweat-slicked torso, quickly, the way he wanted to, with little regard for the arousal of his partner, even as a distant part of his soul chastised him for using their intimate relationship as a distraction from anger and confusion. He settled over the rosy brown of nipple, swiped his tongue once, twice over the already-pointed tip, then pulled back to allow his eyes to range over the sturdy body.

Roughly, Spock used his knees to force the muscular legs apart. He arched his back to rub the tip of his long shaft along the half-erect length of the human organ. “I desire your body,” he growled, staring down at Kirk’s genitals. Deliberately, he avoided his lover’s gaze.

There was a long silence.

Spock shifted his weight from one stiffened arm to another, wanting to move, but held back by memories of gentle hands, of bodies adjusting for comfort. His eyes traveled up to Kirk’s chest and stayed there. He watched the gentle swell of respiration. Jim was breathing at a slightly greater rate than was normal; his breaths were not deep, but shallow, perhaps also indicative of distress....

“Spock?”

The silence between them was broken.

“Is this really what you want? You know this is something I’m willing to give you, I want to feel you inside of me, but is this what you need or is it something else? Don’t you want to talk this out?”

“No. I desire you,” Spock hoarsely insisted. The physical was simple, defining, available. He pulled on Kirk’s legs, pushed them up towards the broad chest now glittering with sweat in the moist heat of the night. The movement brought the pale buttocks up against Spock’s groin, and his organ slipped naturally along the crevasse.

_Cool, cool, his lover’s skin was coolness to slacken his heat, he could find respite in this body, as T’Jul had served Sokar in his need, and T’nar had given life to Surak, as Amanda had served the fevered body of Sarek with all the love and human compassion within her, but not for him, not for him...._

Spock jerked with the unwanted, disturbing image of his parents locked in the passion of pon farr. Roughly, seeking only the distraction of sensation, he pushed the head of his organ against Kirk’s tightly clenched orifice. The very tip tingled in sharp-edged pleasure, and he yearned to bury himself completely. But Kirk gave a very audible grunt of discomfort that penetrated Spock’s selfishness, and Spock could feel the sphincter grow even tighter as his lover’s body instinctively denied him access.

Kirk was holding his own legs up with a hand on each knee. “Fine. Go right ahead.” The voice was unmistakably bitter. “Fuck me if that will make you happy. After all, that’s why I’m here, aren’t I, to make you happy?”

Startled at the sudden transformation, Spock’s eyes flew to lock with Kirk’s. For just a moment there was something bare and obvious in Kirk’s gaze, something that spoke beyond the anger in his voice, something that Spock had seen before in his captain. But he could not name it now, and before he was able to pursue the elusive clue in hazel depths, Kirk turned his head aside.

Kirk groped for and found the lubricant he had brought to the room with him.

“Here,” he said, his voice as tight as his body. His brows were contracted into a frown as he slapped the tube into Spock’s hand. “At least use this.”

But before Spock could flip the cap open, his wrist was grabbed in an unyielding grasp, and Kirk’s lion eyes, aglow with intensity, bored into his. “Before you do, think about this. How many times have you wanted to screw me because you really wanted to, and how many times just to hide some strong emotion you’re having a hard time coping with? How many times to hide? I’m tired of it, Spock.”

Kirk dropped his restraining hand, returned it to his bent knee, and turned his head to stare out the open window into the night. “Go ahead, fuck away.”

Defense seemed imperative. “It is not that I do not wish to communicate with you,” Spock abruptly maintained. “You and I have differing opinions on what is important to convey.”

Kirk abandoned his contemplation of the night, looked at the tight face above him and rolled his eyes. “Right.”

Spock dropped the tube and grabbed Kirk’s ankles. “Shall I suspend my own judgment, my own knowledge of myself?” he asked harshly. His fingers dug in sharply, he could feel the strength of bone beneath his grip. “Shall I allow your decision as to what is right for me override my own? How can you tell me ‘this is necessary for you’?” He released his hard grasp and spread his hands in decisive denial. “You cannot. I decide. I must decide. And I tell you, there is no need to speak.”

Kirk sighed heavily. “I don’t want to play this game with you, Spock. I love you. I care about you. I thought we were sharing our lives.” His hand traveled urgently up one stiffened arm. “I want to know you, all of you, not some truncated version of Spock, as if you had sprung up fully-grown on the steps of Starfleet Academy. But you won’t let me.” Utter frustration colored his words. He abruptly released his hold on his lover’s bicep. “I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said bitterly. “Go ahead, start fucking me if you want to.”

Abruptly Spock pulled back. He grabbed at the silken sheet and rolled to sit on the edge of the bed in the same motion. “I am not in the habit,” he said between clenched teeth, “of engaging in sexual activity with an unwilling partner.” By the time he’d finished the sentence he was firmly wrapped up in the sheet. The penis that still stood uncomfortably straight between his legs was effectively hidden. He wished that he could hide other parts of himself from his lover as well. Despite his efforts to avoid the revealing intimacy of the meld, he felt flayed open.

For there was truth in Jim’s accusation, truth that Spock had never stopped to examine. His mind ranged over other times, the pleasure he had taken in the cool body. They were easy to recall; he had not discovered that particular urge calling to him often. The first time, with Jim wildly encouraging. Other times, the sweaty face turned towards him in love, or the strong shoulders rocking willingly beneath his weight. Jim, already satisfied, emitting a cry of delight as Spock reached orgasm within him.

But amidst the tangled jungle of pleasure lurked a serpent of deceit: times of jealousy, disappointment, frustration, taken and hidden within human flesh.

The knowledge burned. Spock buried it deep, denying its heat, and abruptly pulled the sheet even more tightly about him.

Kirk sat up and reached for his clothing, neatly folded on one of the low benches the Binians called tables. “Fine. Great. Leave us both with a case of blue balls. I’ll go back to my room and take care of it. But think about what I’ve said, Spock. I care about that boy, too, you know. I really want to find a way to stop him from throwing his life away. But... I care about you, about us, more.” He roughly pulled on his clothing, then without looking at his lover again, he was gone.

It did not take Spock long to leave as well. The room seemed stifling, closing him in despite the open window. He needed space for the incredible variety of emotions that were assaulting him, he needed to move to exorcise all this anger, this confusion within him. Kirk, Jamomi, McCoy..., Amanda....

He needed motion, needed to walk. Quickly he dressed and walked downstairs, through the gathering hall and out to the deck.

Once outside on the sand under the dark Shercatan sky, Spock shook his head once, straightened his shoulders and set out purposefully down the abandoned beach, in unconscious imitation of his captain’s need to pace during times of crisis.

As Kirk had said, he needed to think.

 

 

The planet of Shercata boasted one small satellite, only one-half the diameter of the Earth’s moon. It reflected a pallid light that barely gave shadows to the waving grasses and shells upon the beach. Despite its round fullness in the Shercatan sky, the night was very dark.

After hours of walking, Spock sat on the very edge of where the sandy shoreline gave way to the sawtooth vegetation of the dunes. The long line of Binian clan houses were merely specks upon the horizon down along the line of beach, very far away. Here he could only hear the sounds of nature. The sharp cawing of unseen birds in the sky, the slap of the surf upon the sand, the occasional splash of a fish, all of it he pulled about him like a cloak.

Spock’s arms were wrapped around his drawn-up knees, and he stared out into the ceaseless motion of the ocean. The starlight glinted upon the crest of each wave. There were little sparkles of light that turned the water into another sky, with its own set of moving, mutable constellations.

His scientist’s mind understood stars and waves. He comprehended the complex forces that drew waves up from the depths of the ocean, far out from the land, and started them on their long journey to the beach. He could look at the roiling, ceaseless upswelling and see not only the beauty that fed his soul, but the numbers and symbols that described the wave’s existence in the physical world. Given sufficient time for observation, Spock could have produced a set of equations that exactly predicted the tides that rose and fell here; he could have described the probability of any one wave kissing the beach where he was sitting.

But Spock took no solace from the cold precision of numbers now. During his long hours of solitude he had reached many conclusions, but none of them were comforting, and none of them assuaged the ache in his soul.

He had wondered how the consolation that had walked into his room with Jim could have degenerated into angry words between them. But anger was not the appropriate term to describe his lover’s behavior, Spock had slowly realized. There had been such a marked transformation between Jim’s patience and impatience. Almost as if the emotional words were... deliberate. As if their expression were a sudden inspiration, and means to an end.

Spock looked up towards the stars, craning his neck so that he observed the points of light directly overhead. He was not really surprised. Spock had seen his captain manipulate people and events too often not to know that Kirk was capable of doing the same with him. He could only conclude that he had forced his lover to reach for another weapon at his disposal, since kindness and cajoling had not produced the desired results. It was somewhat disturbing, though, to acknowledge the feeling that rose up within him, something wholly masculine and entirely stubborn, that rejoiced in the ineffectiveness of Kirk’s approach. Spock did not know what to do with this feeling, did not know where to put it within the composite of his relationship with Kirk. He loved Jim. How could there be a place for such malicious triumph, such resentment next to the love?

It was almost simpler to think about Jamomi. For a long time as he paced unseeing along the shoreline, Spock had attempted to construct an equation that would verify the decision he had made not to speak to Dlana, not to interfere. He could see its neat parameters even now. On one side was the overwhelming good to millions who needed the drug in the aftermath of the epidemic on Celsus V. On the other was the welfare of one small boy.

The equation would not balance until Spock added his heart.

He picked up a handful of sand and watched while it slipped through his fingers.

“You’re not going to say a word” McCoy had accused him. In the darkness, Spock shook his head in one abrupt movement to the side, the Vulcan gesture of denial that he so seldom used among his human crewmates.

He desperately wanted to speak. He wanted... he wanted.... He wanted to shield the boy from harm. But Jamomi also deserved the place he would find by conquering his planet and surviving the Andoluse, triumphant. Had not Spock’s own Kahs-wan been the lifeline that told him he was Vulcan? It was the surety that had connected him to his father’s people. Even when he found no peace in Shikahr, when he had known his future lay elsewhere, still the anchor was there, the call of the land. He was Vulcan.

Spock’s fingers dug into the sand, clenching into fists. This was a dilemma that knew no solution. He could not deny Jamomi what he himself had needed, even if it was at the cost of the boy’s life. Could he?

Spock took a long, shuddering breath, tasting the sea salt in the air, pulling the rich humidity deep into his lungs, allowing his mind to slide away from the frustrating, emotional dilemma that confronted him. Nowhere on Vulcan did the air smell or taste like this. This was an Earth-scent, reminiscent of his first weeks at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco, or of vacations he had taken to visit his mother’s relatives.

The image of Amanda rose in his mind. His mother. Dlana. Jamomi’s mother. Two women so very different, and yet also so very much alike.

“Dlana is out of her mind” McCoy had said. Spock was not so certain. He did not understand motherhood, or the forces that motivated his own mother in his upbringing, but he had looked upon Dlana in a new light this evening. Perhaps Dlana was showing a kind of raw courage that the three men from the _Enterprise_ lacked. She risked far more than they. They had questioned her judgment, and Spock still agonized over it. But little as he understood it, Spock did not question a mother’s love.

Memories tugged at the corners of his mind, a kaleidoscope of images that had come to plague him ever since the _Enterprise_ had been assigned to this mission, and in all of them the figure of Amanda walked. These were the dark representations from his past that Kirk had urged him to confront. Spock felt one in particular, resting upon the edges of his consciousness. It roiled within a sandstorm cloud upon his own personal horizon, daring him to walk under its whirling winds.

_Darkness. An alarm bell. Alien thoughts hurtling against his mind. A door. And behind it, Amanda..._

Spock held the memory as far from himself as he could, but still it beckoned. With Kirk insisting in the bedroom, trying to impose his will, it had been impossible for Spock to share or remember anything. His pride forebade it, long years of tight suppression and isolation were impossible to overcome. But here on the beach, weary with his wanderings and the emotional confrontation with the being he loved, sick to his heart at the sure fate of Jamoni, Spock could not deny a persistent question.

What price had he paid for this life he had built, the life that denied the pain of his upbringing?

Swallowing thickly, Spock forced himself to answer. He had become a self-contined unit walking through time, well insulated from the buffets of the storms raging behind him. But a being without a meaningful, personal past could not construct dreams for the future. The months and years, planets and missions had stretched before him, professionally satisfying, but personally bleak. Time itself had contracted in upon him; an insular life upon the _Enterprise_ has become his entire universe.

Kirk had changed it all. From the moment Kirk had assumed command, Spock had started re-defining his personal boundaries, not even noticing that they were inexorably expanding outward. Now Spock felt the connections that bound him to the rest of the universe, to Jamomi, Dlana, but most especially to Jim. He had a future, one filled with dancing hazel eyes, a mind that vibrated in harmony with his own, and a universe of possibilities besides.

But if Jim, Jamomi, and yes, even McCoy had found a foothold in his life, how could Spock deny the relevance of those who had shaped him into what he was today? In the moment that it took him to draw one surprised breath, the logic of assigning meaning to his memories suddenly became clear.

A sense of peace, mixed with determination, swept through him. Spock lay back upon the sand and stared up at the star-studded sky. He felt the same way that he had on that unforgettable day when he and Jim had first kissed. There were no doubts in his mind. This was right.

Spock closed his eyes. Unbidden, an image came to him.

Marching through the desert was a sturdy rock wall, about three feet tall, with mortar crumbling here and there. It was an Earth wall, built long ago in Iowa, now a permanent edifice in a Vulcan’s mind. Built because two hearts loved...

Spock swung the gate in the wall open, and walked through to the other side...

 

 

_The loud blaring of the alarm klaxon jolted thirteen-year-old Spock from a sound sleep. The bellowing from the horn in the corridor outside his assigned cabin made his head jerk abruptly upright; it caused his heart to beat furiously in his side before he could make an effort to control. He peered through the darkness of his small and solitary room. What had happened? Had their ship been attacked? Had the engines malfunctioned?_

_He brought up his hands to protect his sensitive ears as he attempted to stand. It was difficult. His feet slipped out from under him and he had to brace himself with one hand on the mattress. The deck was canted at a sloping angle that told him there were serious problems with the passenger vessel Tinochtitlán. He swallowed hard, one part of him noticing the emotional gesture, another part excusing it considering the circumstances. Sarek would say the cause was sufficient._

_In the darkness that was relieved only by the dull glow of an emergency light over the door, Spock groped his way to the computer console. It would be logical to assume that information on the emergency would be conveyed on the screen. He was confident that the machine would tell him what had caused the problem, and what it would be appropriate for him, a passenger, to do about it._

_But the screen was inactive. For the first time since he had awakened, Spock felt an uncontrolled tendril of dread seep into his throat._

_Spock turned towards the wall that separated his cabin from his parents’. He sought deep within himself for the reassuring tug of the parental bond he shared with Sarek, found it, and knew that it came from farther away than the mere meters that separated him from the sleeping quarters shared by his mother and father. Where was Sarek? Could he be in danger?_

_There was sudden silence as the alarm klaxon stopped in mid-wail, but there was still noise coming from outside the door as other passengers filled the hall, asking questions, their voices raised in fear. One woman’s voice was filled with a most reprehensible panic. Spock knew that it was correct procedure to remain calm, where he was, and yet the room closed in about him and made him uneasy. It was like a coffin, he thought, such as Terrans are buried in. Perhaps it would be logical to seek the location of Sarek, and assure himself that his father was well. It would be well to also establish the location of Amanda. Sarek would undoubtedly be concerned about her, assuming they were not together._

_Spock compressed his lips. If Amanda were Vulcan, he would share a parental link with her, and he would already know whether his mother were safe or not. Now, it would be necessary to verify that by mere physical means...._

_With difficulty Spock reached for his clothing, drew each article on, and made his way to the door, fighting the upward angle of the floor by leaning sharply forward. The door did not open automatically as he approached, so he groped for the mechanical lock to one side._

_The lever that should have opened the door would not move. Shifting so that he could obtain a better grip on the cold bar, Spock tried again, pressing down with the flat of his palm. There was a minute creak, and he felt some give in the metal. He took a deep breath. It was necessary to marshall his mental energy, clear his mind of emotional obstructions so that strength could flow through his body, guided by his mind, down his arm and into his hand and fingers. Otherwise, he would be trapped within this room, at the mercy of events, cut off from communications with others...._

_It took all his adolescent strength to move the lever. Spock pressed down, down, putting his slender body into the effort, and after long moments of strain and concentration, he felt the rod move again. Another moment and it snapped down, bruising the tips of his fingers, but opening up the door with a little sighing sound, as if of relief._

_The narrow corridor was filled with people streaming by in confusion, some moving to his right, some to his left, none noticing a thin Vulcan boy standing all alone in a doorway. As Spock stared at them through the red light of the emergency bulbs, wisps of smoke began to drift down from the ceiling where several pipes had broken through the plexi-plastic. A cloud was forming along the long line of corridor, an insubstantial but deadly canopy._

_“We’ve got to get out of here!” a hawk-nosed human male passing directly in front of the boy cried. He picked up a little golden-haired girl who was hurrying before him, and roughly pulled on the arm of the woman running behind._

_“To the lifeboats!” she encouraged, and clutched the baby in her arms closer to her chest. “The ship must be on fire!”_

_Their words started a stampede. All the beings in the corridor began to run to Spock’s left, their voices raised in fear. Fire! Fire! Spock watched them go, struggling against the emotional emanations from which he could not completely shield. He closed his eyes, and sagged against the half-open door behind him, feeling sick to his stomach. It was so difficult to control, to separate himself from their unreasoning panic, their urgent desire to move, the adrenalin rush that filled these humans as they sought a place of safety for themselves and for their families._

_He could not have moved even if his nausea passed and he had wanted to; the solid wall of beings streaming before him would not allow him entry._

_But eventually there was no one left in the corridor but him, and Spock felt the pressure upon his mind and body easing. Shakily he put one hand up to his head and attempted to re-erect his shields. When Sarek had so painstakingly taught him how to protect himself from the onslaught of more emotional beings, Spock had not imagined he would ever be exposed to such a rush of chaotic, unrestrained images, not even when he accompanied his father on his diplomatic journeys. For the first time since he was very young, his shields had failed him._

_The smoke that filled the corridor was still drifting over Spock’s head, and its acrid odor filled his nostrils and made him flinch. Far away there was the sound of a hatchway clanging shut. But before he could seek a place of safety, he must find his parents. Sarek. Amanda._

_Half-sliding, half-walking along the tilted passageway, Spock moved to the door of his parents’ cabin, and pressed down upon the buzzer that should grant him entry. The door did not move, but he heard a voice from within cry out, “Sarek? Is that you? Spock?”_

_The boy winced with the sudden stab of psychic energy that Amanda’s emotions drove into his mind. He squinted, and pressed the whole front of his body against the door, as if he could force himself through it, as if there would be a relief to the pain in his head if only he could slip through the spaces between the molecules and stand before his mother. It was confusing. It was not logical._

_Spock found his voice. “Mother?” The image of her face was clearly before him._

_Palpable relief pounded through the metal that separated them. It flowed straight into Spock’s mind. He jerked his head back from the door as if stung. “Spock! Son! Are you all right?” He could hear her pulling on furniture as she climbed to the door, and felt a vibration as his mother impacted against the smooth surface._

_The boy stepped back so that only the flat of his right palm remained in contact with the metal. “I am unharmed, Mother. Is Sarek not with you?”_

_“No, he went to speak with the Andorian ambassador. I’m alone in here.” Now that the initial wave of Amanda’s relief had subsided, Spock felt only minor emotional vibrations from her. Her voice had a slight tremor to it, surely excusable, Spock judged._

_“Are you all right, Mother?”_

_A strangled laugh that he had never heard in their home on Vulcan. “So far. There is a pipe that’s come through the ceiling, and smoke is starting to come out of it. It smells full of chemicals.”_

_The boy drew in a deep breath, smelling the sharp odor of the air all about him, but filled only with concern for his mother. He looked up at the pipes that were exposed in the ceiling further on down the corridor. There was a high probability that the same pipeline was now emitting toxic fumes that were being breathed by both of them. Yet Amanda was in greater danger than he was, for the small room would concentrate the smoke and fumes. He had no idea if humans were more susceptible to toxic air than Vulcans were, or less, but they could not delay to find out._

_“You must leave the cabin immediately. If you use the manual override to open the door, we can move from this location away from the smoke.” Spock could not control the pre-adolescent squeak that popped into his voice._

_For the first time, Amanda coughed. “Son, I can’t. I’ve tried. It’s frozen shut and I can’t move it. I tried earlier to get to you. Didn’t you hear me calling?”_

_The smoke now filled fully half the corridor and Spock put his hand up against his face to shield his nose and mouth as he spoke. Nevertheless, he too coughed as he said, “No. I heard no one.” His voice came out strangled and strained._

_Amanda heard the cough and the strangeness in her son’s voice. “Son, leave me. I heard people saying there was fire. You must go. There must be smoke out there, too.”_

_Spock could not hold the image of himself retreating from his current position in his mind. Leave his mother trapped in her cabin? “There is no fire, mother,” he prevaricated, and managed to control another cough. The smoke was definitely getting worse, but it was true that he had not actually spotted any flame. Smoke was not fire, he reasoned. “Perhaps if I pushed from the outside while you attempted the manual control from the inside, the door will....” He clutched at the edge of the door with his fingers and pulled. The metal sheet did not budge._

_“No.” Amanda’s voice was firm. She was using the same tone as when she had told him to stay away from the high cliffs of the mountains when he was only eight. “I want you to leave now. You will obey me, Spock.”_

_He took refuge in logic. “I am not in immediate danger,” he said, eyeing the smoke that was now in thick layers all about him. It was getting difficult to breathe. “It would not be logical for me to leave without attempting to free you from your room. You are in danger, Mother.” Even an emotional being could see that! Why did she not accept his help? Spock tried to dig his fingers into the crack between frame and door, pushing his nails in until they hurt._

_“No! I want you to go!” There was a rising note of hysteria that Spock had never heard before in Amanda’s voice. “Please, Spock, for me, go. I’m not important, you are. I don’t care what happens to me. Go, Go! For me!”_

_He could not control his coughing any more, and he yielded to the demands of his body. The cough got worse, he drew more smoke into his lungs with every breath. His fingers slipped from the edge of the door and he doubled over uncontrollably, suddenly unable to speak._

_Defeat washed over him. What would Sarek say when he found his wife and son dead? Would he blame his half-breed son for not having the bodily control that would enable him to resist the smoke, for not having the Vulcan strength to wrench the door to his mother’s cabin open with his bare hands?_

_Behind the door, Spock could hear his mother’s frantic movements as she scrabbled at the manual controls. Through his coughing he heard “Come on, come on,” as she desperately pushed down on the bar that had resisted his efforts._

_“Spock! Spock!” she cried, and her panic was evident even through her own strangled tones. “Lie down flat on the floor! The air should be clearer there. And crawl away. Crawl away from the smoke!”_

_His head was already not far from the floor, and the smoke was everywhere. Lying down flat would not help him or Amanda. And he would not know where to crawl. Spock slid to his knees and pushed against the door, hoping...._

_Suddenly there was a draft of fresh air blowing upon him, and Spock looked to his right, towards a swirl of voices and light. Sarek came striding towards him, followed by humans wearing masks and carrying equipment. The uniformed crewmembers went straight to the exposed pipes in the ceiling, but Sarek knelt down next to his son, holding his shoulders and giving support._

_He pressed a mask against Spock’s face before the boy could speak, but Spock nodded gasping towards the door and was understood._

_In just moments the smoke began to dissipate, and Sarek attacked the door with a long bar handed to him by a crewman. Spock slowly got to his feet and found that he was able to stand without assistance. He dropped the mask from his face, took a tentative breath, and watched as the door to his mother’s prison finally slid open._

_“Amanda,” Sarek said, and raw emotion was in his voice. He took one huge step into the room and embraced his coughing wife._

_Quickly they moved together out into the corridor, and Spock stepped aside to let them walk past him. Once his mother was able to draw enough breath to speak, she buried her face in the front of Sarek’s stiffly embroidered tunic._

_“Oh, Sarek,” she sighed, “I knew you were coming. I just didn’t know if it would be in time.”_

_Sarek took her chin in his hand and looked down into the china blue eyes. “My wife. I am so pleased to find you unharmed.”_

_Amanda gazed at her husband with a look of unabashed love and gratitude. Spock felt distinctly uncomfortable in the presence of so much unrestrained emotion. He had never seen his parents embrace before, had not realized Sarek was capable of such an impulsive action._

_Amanda pulled back just the smallest bit from their hug. She turned toward her son while still keeping one arm wrapped around her husband. Her face had a look of pure joy as she made eye contact with Spock and extended her other arm towards him in an unmistakable invitation: Join us._

_For a moment, the shortest moment that he could possibly be conscious of, Spock almost yielded to the need for the comfort of his mother’s touch. He almost walked forward, towards her. There was a part of him that was so, so relieved that she was safe, that they would be able to travel back to Shikahr and she would be there, in their home, the human mother whom he had always known. The thought that she might have perished was... incomprehensible. Amanda was... necessary. For their family. For Sarek. For... Spock._

_But then Spock realized that Sarek’s eyes were also upon him. And although his father was projecting a warm sense of approval and welcome through the parental bond, Spock could not conceive of dropping his Vulcan controls. He could not succumb to the tumult inside of him that wanted to touch his mother, wanted to connect with her physically the way he was already connected to Sarek through the mental resonances of their father-to-son link. He could not. Not possibly. Not in front of Sarek._

_Spock drew himself erect, and carefully placed his hands behind his back, in the way that he had been taught when addressing a superior. “Father,” he said, “I must report my failure.”_

_There was a long moment of silence. Amanda stared at him, at first uncomprehending, but then a terrible look of disappointment crossed her face. She gave a small, child’s cry of entreaty, and curled the fingers of her outstretched hand towards her son, beckoning towards him once again._

_Spock ignored her. Although he saw each expression, saw each movement, he would not respond. Could not respond. Did Amanda truly expect him to indulge in such an emotional, physical display of gratitude and love merely because these were unusual circumstances? Was it not true that when one was a Vulcan, one was a Vulcan always?_

_His mother’s face contorted, perhaps in sorrow, as she drew her lower lip between her teeth. Spock could see a glistening in her eyes as they filled with liquid. He realized that it was entirely possible that his mother would cry._

_Then her hand dropped to her side, and Amanda turned convulsively to hide her face against Sarek. Her husband wrapped his arms around her shaking form, looked over her head and said gently, “In what way have you failed, my son?”_

_It was difficult not to react to his mother’s distress, but Spock managed to keep his voice perfectly level as he spoke. “My shields were breached by emotion as our fellow passengers fled from the area. I had not the strength to prevent the experience. And I also allowed myself to be ruled by fear when Mother’s door would not open. I submit myself to your guidance.”_

_Sarek nodded. “We will speak of this at a later, more suitable time. For now, we must find other quarters. The damage to the ship is minimal, but this area is no longer habitable. Come.”_

_Slowly, Sarek walked away, his wife still within the curve of his arm, with thirteen-year-old Spock trailing behind. Before they turned down an intersecting hallway, Spock looked behind him._

_The crew members were still working on exposed pipes and conduits, picking up debris. The doors to two cabins remained open. Spock was... pleased that they were leaving the scene of such an emotional, dangerous event. But he could not help feeling a sense of loss._

_He did not understand why._

 

 

Spock blinked himself back to awareness. It was very hard to do, when his mind wanted to linger over all the revelations that the scene on the passenger liner had provided. But the image faded and reality intruded. The waves were still breaking upon the shoreline, the stars still rode in splendid majesty overhead. And seated next to him, staring out to sea with his arms wrapped around his knees, was Kirk.

Spock stared at his lover’s broad back, at the relaxed set of the shoulders, at the muscled swell of arm that was silhouetted against the faint light from the sky, and part of his tired soul expanded. Here was his lover. The angry words that the two of them had exchanged earlier had not prevented Kirk from finding him, nor did they prevent Spock from experiencing a flare of gratitude. Of all the beings in the entire universe, this one person cared enough about him to have followed him in his wanderings upon the sand. Or perhaps, Spock reconsidered, remembering, there had been two people. Or even three. Looking back now, Spock felt sure that at one time Amanda had loved him.

Spock sat up and cleared his throat, contracted with the heaviness of the night air and with something else as well. He asked, “How did you know where to find me?”

Kirk continued to look out to sea. “I’m not sure. It’s a big island. You could have been anywhere.” His voice softened. “But I couldn’t sleep. I had to talk to you, so I came straight here. I think I could find you no matter where you were.” Kirk turned just his head to look at his lover. “How are you?” he asked quietly.

Spock took a deep breath and wrapped his arms around his knees, copying Kirk’s pose. “I have experienced happier times.” His voice sounded thick in the cooling, moisture-laden air.

Slowly, Kirk nodded. “Me too. Look,” he twisted his body so that he was fully facing Spock, “I have to apologize to you. What I said in your room tonight about not letting me in, especially the way that I said it..., I’m sorry.”

Spock nodded slowly. “I am aware of your expertise in manipulating others. Such maneuvers will not work with me.”

Kirk didn’t allow the surprising comment to deter his confession. “You’re right. I’m... actually glad they didn’t. I was trying to... push you. But I can’t make things work between us by trying to force them, and it’s not right to impose my own opinions on you, even if I do think I’m right and it’s for your own good.” He sighed. “I had good intentions, Spock. I was going to wait for you to talk to me, to trust me. I wanted to give you the time you needed to sort things out. But I got impatient. You know I do sometimes.”

“Yes,” Spock said, “that characteristic seems to be an essential part of your personality.”

Kirk grimaced. “I know. And other things that I’m not too proud of. Damn.” He shook his head, staring down at the sand. “It seems like we’re always arguing, about one thing or another. I’ve never argued with any of my lovers the way you and I have.”

“Perhaps,” Spock said, looking at Kirk’s averted head, “that is because I am not just another one of your lovers.”

“That’s right,” Kirk said, looking up quickly, “you’re not. You’re more important to me than anyone has ever been.”

“As you are to me,” Spock quietly agreed. “When we disagree, I have discovered that it is rarely over trivial matters. We are still finding our balance.”

They held their locked gazes for the space of ten long human heartbeats.

“I want this to work between us,” Kirk stated softly. “Okay?”

He removed one hand from his knee and held it up in the air, an offering. Spock took it with his own, squeezing, his fingers tightening, and together their linked hands fell to rest on the sand between them.

They sat in silence, listening to the water and the wind. After a while Kirk sighed again. “It will be dawn in a few hours, and we’re going to have to watch the beginnings of the Andoluse. I wish we didn’t have to, I wish you weren’t caught in this situation.” He looked at his companion. “It doesn’t seem fair that everything should be so hard for you. You can’t do it, can you? Can’t talk to Dlana?” His tone was soft, non-accusing.

Sorrowfully, Spock shook his head. “No. I cannot deny Jamomi what I myself needed.”

Kirk turned back to the sea. “And I don’t even know if I would let you jeopardize the mission to speak again even if you wanted to. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe he’ll come back with no trouble at all.”

“It is possible,” Spock said, but neither one of them heard hope in his voice.

Restlessly, Kirk shrugged, then tightened his grip on the hot fingers in his grasp. “You’ve been sitting out here a long time,” he said. “What else have you been thinking about?”

Spock pulled the moist air of an alien planet deep into his lungs, then expelled it loudly. He replied precisely, “I have been remembering an incident that occurred when I was thirteen years old.”

Kirk gave him a sharp, surprised glance. “You were?”

“Yes. Your words to me tonight were not without effect. After considerable reflection, I found myself... wishing to remember.”

Kirk fought down the triumphant voice inside that said he had been right all along, and focused instead on the effort he knew such a confession must have cost his proud lover. “Did it hurt?” he asked softly.

For a long time Spock did not answer. Finally, he said, “Yes. Yes, it did. But it was most... enlightening.”

For the first time in more than twenty-six years, Spock understood what had happened that night on the passenger ship Tinochtitlán. He felt the pain that he had caused Amanda, saw the utter disappointment in her eyes, and truly comprehended the distance that he had opened up between them. The emotion that he had rigidly denied before welled up in him now; there was a stabbing pain in his chest, a desolation in his spirit. She had asked for so little, and yet he had been so wrapped up in following Sarek and the Vulcan way that he had been unable to respond.

How could he have carried the image of that night in his memory for so long, let it hover on the horizon of his mind for so many years, yet failed to recognize it for the seminal event in his life that it was?

His mind ranged over the years after they had returned to Vulcan, and for the first time he recognized Amanda’s gradual withdrawal. His human mother had lost her hope in him; whatever it was she had always dreamed of finding in her own son had died. Those last adolescent years he had spent on Vulcan before leaving to attend Starfleet Academy had been painful; how was it that he had not realized that some of the pain came from the invisible separation of Amanda’s spirit from his own? The eyes that had always looked at him with love, with encouragement and a smile had turned inwards. Those blue eyes had lost their special glow. Spock was utterly shamed that it had taken him twenty-six years to notice.

He might have caused Sarek distress in choosing to attend Starfleet Academy; now Spock realized the wound his mother bore was older and deeper.

Spock brought the hand that was not still in Kirk’s grasp to press against his own cheek. He could still feel the stinging impact of Amanda’s fingers as she slapped him on the _Enterprise_. She had asked him, “Isn’t there anything of me in you?” That day, there had been very little. Tonight, sitting on a Binian beach with his lover by his side, tormented by the vision of a little boy going to his death, Spock believed that there was a great deal of Amanda in him.

He felt light-headed, as if the world were swirling about him. The panorama of his life stretched out before him, and all of it, each individual memory, each person from his past begged for reassessment.

He attempted to express the substance of his thoughts. Perhaps because his lover had followed him to the beach, seeking an understanding between them, the pride that had prevented him from speaking before was no longer an obstacle. Spock wanted Kirk to know.

“I have allowed one small cloud to escape my horizon,” Spock said slowly, as if each word were a wonder and a revelation. “I allowed the sandstorm to rage about me. The sand stung. It was... not pleasant. And yet, I am still here.”

Kirk’s fingers tightened about his. “And I’m still here too. You know I always will be.”

“Yes,” Spock whispered, staring down at the sand. “That is... a comfort.”

They sat there, under the faint moonlight and the glow of the stars where they lived. A hundred waves broke upon the shoreline before Spock whispered again. “I believe that there is a place inside me for the happiness..., and for the unhappiness and the pain as well. I have much to consider. So much.”

They were still there when dawn broke over the ocean.  
   
CHAPTER FOUR

Two days later Kirk stood on the long deck of the Meriti clan house and watched a little girl trudge across the sand. Her face was streaked with dirt and the tracks of tears, and she walked with an obvious limp. But she was smiling, and when she saw the group of people waiting for her near the bottom of the steps she broke into a run.

“I did it! I did it!” her little voice piped. “It took me a long time but I made it back!”

Men and women surrounded her, children laughed. One man swung her up to his shoulder in triumph.

Kirk turned away. Little Erinta, smallest of all the girls her age, was the next-to-the-last child to return from the two grueling days of the Andoluse. Now only Jamomi was still gone.

Dlana leaned heavily against the deck’s wooden railing, and stared down the line of beach towards where the children, one by one, had emerged from the marshes that backed up the clan houses. She shaded her eyes against the sun halfway down the afternoon sky, and Kirk winced at the naked anxiety on her face.

There were others from Dlana’s clan on the deck, but none of them seemed willing to intrude on a mother’s fears. Raton sat in a chair ten meters away, pretending to read and looking with concern at Dlana every few minutes. Further on down Kirk saw that another woman from Dlana’s group marriage, Tripid, daughter of Hana, was reading to a few children, including Jamomi’s brother and sister. Sitting on the steps that led down to the beach, Hunyady and McCoy were involved in a quiet conversation.

And Spock.... Kirk swung back to look out over the sand. Spock had been a silent presence the past two days, never very far from Dlana, yet never quite near either. Now he walked along the very edge of the surf, his hands clasped behind his back, his head down. He looked as he had ever since Kirk had found him on the beach, as if he were thinking very, very deeply. Everyone, Dlana, Raton, the quiet children on the deck, McCoy, himself, they were all poised, waiting, waiting....

Yesterday Kirk had uttered words of encouragement to the clan leader as they worked on details of the dep weed agreement. She had accepted them with grace and a brave smile as the sounds of the first few children returning, the strongest and largest, drifted in through the open window.

This morning many children were still unaccounted for, and Kirk had nodded confidently to her as they met in the negotiating room.

But as child after child was gathered in the loving arms of their clan uncles and mother, he could see her hope fade visibly. She excused herself from the final phases of the negotiations and spent hour after hour on the deck. Eventually everyone else left the sun-filled room and found their way outside too. Like the fearful mother, they watched, quietly. Dlana seemed rooted to her post. She clutched at her pregnant belly tightly, her face twisted in anxiety. Once or twice a spasm of pain seemed to distort her features, and Kirk wondered if she were in labor.

The sounds of celebration for Erinta’s return faded away. There was no movement on the beach for a long while, except for Spock’s ceaseless walking, when Dlana turned abruptly to Kirk.

“He’s not coming back, is he?”

He admired her too much to give her false words of hope. She was the leader of her people, intelligent and honorable. She would not believe what she knew in her heart was not true. Silently, Kirk shook his head.

Her lips trembled. “I never thought it was real. I always thought he would say good-bye to me when he left to study off-planet somewhere. He’d be older, and I’d be able to bear the pain....” She caught her lower lip and turned swiftly away from Kirk to lean against the rail again.

“He could be dead now. He probably is already. I hope he is. I can’t bear the thought that he might suffer. Dear Mother of the Universe, he’s suffered enough already.” Her head bowed, and though her back was turned to him, Kirk knew she was surrendering to tears. “If only I knew,” she choked out. “I know he’s failed and won’t come back, but it would help so much to know that he was beyond pain.”

Kirk winced with the grisly image that came to his mind. He hadn’t considered the way a child could die in the wild. Somehow he’d assumed that there would be a sudden fatal accident, or one of the predators would attack.... But someone in the bintorrin could struggle for a long time, suffering.

He looked at the back of the trembling woman with a new thought. For all intents and purposes the Andoluse was over. Jamomi had not made it back with the other children. Must failure mean death?

Kirk walked up behind Dlana and carefully placed his hands upon her shoulders. He thought hard before he said anything. He hadn’t let Bones speak for fear the negotiations would be disrupted through the unwarranted interference of the Federation in a people’s culture. But the agreement for the dep weed was all but signed, and how could they interfere in a maturity ritual that had already run its course? A fine line, in Kirk’s mind, but one he was willing to walk. It might mean Jamomi’s life.

His hands tightened on the insubstantial shoulders of the slight woman before him. Dlana choked and took a deep breath to control her tears.

“Dlana,” he said gently, “why not go and find him?”

She shuddered within his grasp. “I can’t,” she gasped, hanging her head, both her hands fluttering in denial. “It’s part of the tradition. Nature must take those who are not fit to survive.”

Suddenly Spock was at their side. Kirk hadn’t even heard him come bounding up the steps. But now he looked hard from Kirk to Dlana, his eyes narrowing. Kirk didn’t know what that look meant, whether he wanted to lend support to the mother or to stop his captain from speaking, but nothing could prevent Kirk now that his mind was made up.

He turned Dlana so that she was facing him and tried to marshall his arguments. His hands dropped to his side first; physical persuasion had no place here, even if the clan leader looked as if she were on the verge of collapse.

“You’ve always know that Jamomi wasn’t fit. He’s never been as healthy as the other children. He’s never been able to survive on his own outside. But you didn’t reject him just because of that, did you?”

Wordlessly, the woman stared up at him, desperate fear and hope mingled in her eyes.

“No,” Kirk continued, “you loved Jamomi. You gave him everything that you thought was best for him. You found a way to give him joy. Sending him out on the Andoluse just confirms what has always been the truth, what you’ve always known to be the truth. He’s different from all the others. But if you haven’t abandoned Jamomi for the past ten years, why should you abandon him now? Why should this ceremony make such a difference?”

“I love him,” the clan leader cried abruptly, her loud voice ringing its despair up and down the deck. Raton jumped up from his chair and came to join them. McCoy stood up and hovered nearby.

“I love him,” Dlana cried again, softer this time. “And he might already be dead. But even if he isn’t, it wouldn’t be right. How could I....” She fell sobbing into Raton’s outstretched arms.

But she only remained there a few moments. Gently, compassionately, Spock pulled her away from her clan husband. He held her at arm’s length and stared at her until her crying stilled and she looked up into his somber eyes.

“Dlana, daughter of Rusenton, listen to me.” Spock’s deep voice resonated with feeling. “My planet also has a ritual like your Andoluse. I respect your customs as I have always valued those of my own people. You know that I did not wish Jamomi to walk into danger, but I kept my silence. There is a place for tradition in every culture.”

“But the time has come to move beyond tradition. I believe that it is illogical to waste a life, any life. What possible good could Jamomi’s death produce? Only heartache for you and those who love him, and the loss of a brilliant mind. This loss of life would be tragic, and illogical. Are your people so cruel that they would demand a blood sacrifice from you?”

McCoy stared at Spock, surprise obvious on his red-faced features. For a moment Kirk thought he would make some caustic remark, even in the face of tragedy, but Dlana forestalled him.

“No,” she gasped, looking up at the Vulcan with wonder. “No. Do you think....”

“I would like to see your son again, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton,” Spock said intensely. “But only you can give us the authority to find him, and save him if we can.” He released his hold on her and stepped back.

The clan leader bit her lip and looked down at the wooden floor. Then she turned to Raton, a question in her eyes.

“Sh’shon Dlana Meriti, daughter of Rusenton,” he said passionately, “everyone knows of this special child and the love you bear him. It has been two hundred years since we left the hard lands. I say it is time to change. Time to save a life, if we can. Let us go after him.”

For a long minute Dlana stood on the deck, motionless, looking even smaller than she was, surrounded by the three tall men from the _Enterprise_. But they would not move without her word. Only she could send her people on a new course. Kirk did not envy her the decision. How to separate the public good from what her heart needed?

She took a deep breath, brought herself stiffly erect and turned in the direction of the marshes. Defiantly she said, “People who do not change, die. There will be some who will resist me, who will say the old ways are the only ways. They may turn their backs on me, on my family. I do not know how much this clan will accept. So be it. I will not let my son die. I will not let my people die, either. I will bear the consequences.”

Her azure eyes blazed with resolution, even as they never stopped searching the faraway outline of the forest for one small struggling figure. “If I could, I would go myself to look for my son whom I love. But the life within me,” she cupped her hands around her belly and grimaced, “prevents it.” She whirled around and faced Spock. “Will you go for him? You are my son’s future.”

Spock bowed his head. “I will find him and bring him back to you if he is still alive.”

“And I will go,” Raton added. He walked up and touched her arm. “I will never turn my back on you, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton.”

“No,” she argued. “I cannot ask that of you. Let the Federation people go.”

“I will also bear the consequences,” he said softly. “Allow me.”

Slowly, Dlana nodded.

“And I’ll go too,” McCoy interjected into the poignant silence. “You might need a doctor.”

“No,” Spock said abruptly. “That would not be wise.”

“The hell it isn’t,” McCoy said hotly. “Just because you don’t want to admit that you’ve been wrong all along doesn’t mean....”

“Doctor McCoy,” Spock interrupted him sternly, “My personal feelings in this matter have no relevance. But the journey into the marshes may be arduous and we must move quickly; there are only a few more hours of daylight. And you have been exhibiting symptoms of stress and over-tiredness lately that are surely the manifestations of some underlying illness. You will be unable to keep up with us. You will only be a burden.”

Kirk looked first at Spock and then McCoy in surprise. Why hadn’t he realized this? He’d thought McCoy was simply reacting badly to the heat on Shercata. With newly opened eyes he saw that under McCoy’s red-faced indignation was the pallor of illness.

“A burden?” McCoy sputtered. “Why you....”

But Kirk stopped him. “He’s right, Bones. Besides, we’ll take the smaller aircar to try to find the best landing spot in the forest. That only seats four, and we’ll need the space for when we bring Jamomi back. I’m definitely going. You stay here.”

Despite McCoy’s protests, in just minutes Spock retrieved his tricorder, and they found their way to the field where the aircars for the clan were kept. Kirk went straight to the controls, but Raton stopped him and efficiently revved up the motor. Kirk smiled crookedly at his impassive lover as he strapped himself into the other passenger seat in the front. It was only logical that the Binian should fly the unfamiliar vehicle in a search for his own clan son, but the habits of control in Kirk were admittedly hard to overcome.

But Spock barely noticed; he was in the back seat calibrating his tricorder to aid in the search for one small Binian boy. Without that technological assistance, their quest would have been futile. Even though they knew where Jamomi had been dropped off in the marshes, there were an infinite number of ways that he could have chosen to get through the trackless forest.

They were all silent during the long minutes while Raton flew straight to the drop-off point, then piloted the aircar in wider and ever wider circles. Kirk shielded his eyes from the sun in the late afternoon sky and looked down through the front window. The trees, bushes, and steaming bogs were a tangled jumble. His heart sank. Even if they located the boy’s readings, how could they land? There wasn’t a clear space even two meters square except for a marsh, much less the space they’d need for the aircar.

Suddenly Spock raised his tricorder in the characteristic gesture Kirk had seen on landing parties a hundred times before; the simple motion immediately captured all the captain’s attention. Kirk held his breath while his first officer rotated in his seat, obviously trying to pinpoint a reading. Finally, Spock said quietly, “I have him.”

“Where?” Kirk shouted above the noise of the aircar. He peered outside the window, hoping to see a small figure waving up towards the sky.

Spock’s eyes did not budge from the readout on the small screen. “I believe in a marsh with a surface area of approximately five hundred meters. The readings are stationary. They are weak.”

Kirk didn’t allow himself to react to the news. He searched the ground feverishly, trying to locate.... “There?” He pointed towards one of the small bogs that dotted the area.

Raton turned the aircar in a hairpin move that kept them flying over the marsh. Spock looked out the window for the first time and glanced from the tricorder to the ground and back again. “There,” he confirmed.

Kirk couldn’t see any sign of the boy, but he trusted Spock’s interpretation of the figures on the screen. His first officer simply would not make a mistake.

“Thank the Mother of All,” Raton breathed, and straightened the aircar out from its steep turn. “I did not want to think of what would happen to Dlana if we had not found him.”

“He is not rescued yet,” Spock said sharply. “And as I said, the readings are not steady. I believe it is imperative that we reach him soon.”

But that seemed impossible. As Kirk had already noticed, there was no place to land within five kilometers of the innocent looking marsh and it would take precious long minutes to find their way through the tangled undergrowth to the boy. And yet they had to....

Kirk looked hard at his companion. “There’s only one thing to do,” he said quietly.

Spock nodded. “I agree. Raton, would it be possible for you to make a low, slow pass over the area in question, then hover as if you were about to land?”

The small bald man twisted in his seat and risked a quick look back at where the Vulcan was sitting. “You mean you’ll jump?”

Kirk looked down at the ground flashing beneath them. “If you think you can get low enough,” he said, sounding more confident than he felt. Like everything else the Binians owned, the aircars were the latest design, with built-in hovering capabilities to get them in and out of the forest’s tight spaces, but Kirk wondered how close to the ground they could actually get. There were tall trees everywhere. “Then you can go land in that clearing over the ridge and hike to join us as quickly as you can.”

“No,” Raton said quickly. “It is not right. I should be the one to jump. He is my clan son.”

“But you can find your way through these marshes after you land the car much better than we could,” Kirk explained. “And you know how to fly these cars better than we can, too.”

Kirk looked back at his lover to catch a doubtful glance and almost smiled. Spock had often heard his captain’s boast that he could fly anything with or without wings. It was a running joke on the _Enterprise_ , with Kirk loudly claiming that Sulu got better simulator scores than he did only because a captain had no time to practice. But though Kirk was confident that he too could manage to land the aircar in the barely adequate clearing they’d located, he wasn’t going to see Spock jump without him.

How many rescues had the two of them efficiently conducted during their careers on the _Enterprise_? He couldn’t begin to count. But none of them had ever meant so much to Spock. This was something they could do together as an unseen and unacknowledged couple, with Kirk supporting his lover as best he could. If opening up to others was an unstated gift that he had managed to give to Spock because of the love they had for one another, then Kirk was determined not to see that gift die for lack of trying. He’d jump with Spock and let Raton fly away. The two of them would rescue Jamomi, and love, together.

Moments later the left hatch was open. The wind streamed in their faces as Kirk crouched in the doorway and looked down, Spock right behind him. Raton was bringing them in on a long, slow glide that was designed to come to a hovering stop just meters to the side of the marsh. The green tops of the trees brushed against the bottom of the aircar; they were still far above the ground.

The aircar slowed even more and Kirk worried momentarily about stallout. If the car crashed they’d all need rescuing.... The car dipped in closer. Raton daringly maneuvered them down below the level of the topmost branches.

They were flying under the forest canopy now, with the Binian displaying an amazing calm and skill at the controls. “Soon,” the small man called out, and Kirk tensed himself to jump.

“Now,” Raton cried.

Kirk threw the heavy sack with the thick coiled rope and the other equipment they had hastily gathered out the hatchway, then launched himself into the air, twisting as he fell to try to land on his shoulder. He almost made it, but Raton had brought them even closer than Kirk had imagined, and before he could complete the curl his trailing left leg hit the ground. Then he impacted hard with his shoulder, the breath whooshed out of his lungs in a rush, and he turned the motion into a roll.

But when his roll came to a stop and he tried to stand, a stabbing pain shot up his leg from his ankle.

“Damnit!” Kirk whistled through gritted teeth as he sat down abruptly and stared at his boot. He had come to rest against the prickly branches of a spreading bush. The ground was damp all about him with the moisture of the marsh.

Spock knelt beside him. “Bad?” he asked in a clipped tone.

Kirk tried standing again, glad of the supporting hand from Spock. “No,” he gritted. “No problem.” He pulled his arm away and stood upright on his own. His ankle was badly sprained at least. But he didn’t feel the crunch of any broken bones when he put weight on it, just a stabbing sensation that made him want to blink away the spots before his eyes. “The rope?” he asked.

Spock shook his head. “It and our other equipment have been sucked into the bintorrin. We must proceed without it.”

“All right,” Kirk said grimly, grateful for the small packs they both wore about their waists. At least they still had the medical kit, and the knives that Dlana had pressed into their hands just before they took off, and the communicators that linked them with Raton. It would have to be enough. “Let’s go.”

Spock led the way, calling out “Jamomi” in a loud, calm voice and holding his tricorder before him. In only a minute they had hopped from one spot of dry land to another, Kirk gritting his teeth with the jarring to his ankle, until they stood at the very edge of a bog.

And calling out to them from where he was trapped chest deep in the muck was a very frightened little boy.

“Commander Spock! Help me!” Jamomi cried, and struggled forward. Before their horrified eyes the movement caused him to sink further into the clutching brown mud.

“Don’t move!” Kirk called out sharply. He held out a restraining hand that wanted to reach across the distance that separated them. “Don’t move at all. We’ll get you out.”

“Hurry,” the youngster wailed. “It hurts. My legs really hurt.”

Of course they would, Kirk told himself grimly. Dlana had told them the mud was corrosive, capable of eating away flesh. At least the boy had had the presence of mind to keep his arms up; they were laced together over his head. But even from this distance, about twelve meters, Kirk estimated, he could see that the arms were trembling. How could they get him out without exposing themselves to the same dangers? He cursed the fate that kept the _Enterprise_ away. The ship was due back in orbit in only hours; she could have beamed them out of danger, bintorrin and all. But they didn’t have hours to wait. With the sky empty of his silver lady, the only other solution was obvious. Kirk turned to Spock with the answer on his lips.

But Spock was already at the base of a tree, examining one of the hanging vines that were everywhere in the forest. He tugged, nodded to himself decisively, and started to shinny up. Kirk limped over and tried to hold it steady while staring up at the determined figure.

“That’s enough,” Kirk called out. “Cut there.”

But Spock climbed higher before he perched upon a tree branch, drew the knife from his waistpack and started to chop.

The vine came down with a swoosh at Kirk’s feet, and he immediately hauled it over to the edge of the muck. “Jamomi,” he called urgently, “catch this. Put it over your head and get your arms through it. We’ll pull you out.” While he talked he was busy knotting, and soon the vine was as secure as he could make it.

Kirk measured the distance as he heard Spock climb down from the tree behind him. He’d have to make certain the first throw reached the boy; he had no idea if the bog would suck up the vine or if they’d be able to pull it out for another try.

He swayed the noose back and forth, testing. “Ready?” he warned.

A brave, breathless voice answered. “I’m ready.”

Kirk let the vine go and had the satisfaction of seeing it settle into the boy’s hands.

“I’ve got it,” Jamomi cried. Kirk watched anxiously as the boy slipped one arm through the noose, then the other. It fell down over his head and with a distinct plop audible even at this distance landed in the ooze. But it circled his slim body and represented a chance at life.

Spock took the vine from Kirk and pulled in the slack. “Place your hands securely on the knot, Jamomi,” he said calmly. “I will pull you out.”

But with the first tightening of the improvised rope the boy let out a blood-curdling shriek of pain.

“No, no!” he cried. His little sandy-blond head bowed down into the mud, gasping, and Spock abruptly took two steps forward so that he was standing ankle deep in the murky water.

“What is wrong?” he called out urgently.

“My back, where the vine is,” the boy wept. “It’s cutting into me. It burns! It burns! Don’t pull any more, please!” He was hysterically crying now.

“Jamomi, we must,” Spock said, a tremor evident in his voice. “We must get you out of there before you sink.”

But the boy was beyond hearing them now, sobbing and gasping, exhausted by his ordeal into incoherence. Spock looked over at Kirk, a helpless appeal in his eyes.

Kirk picked up the vine just above where his lover already grasped it. “Come on,” he said roughly. “It’s the only way. Pull.”

Together they tugged on the line. Jamomi gave a high-pitched, utterly childlike shriek that cut straight into Kirk’s soul, it was so filled with a helpless pain that he himself was causing. Then the boy’s body slackened. He was unconscious.

“Stop,” Spock commanded, after he and Kirk had heaved with little effect for more than thirty seconds.

Kirk let the vine slide through his hands, but he turned around and frowned. “We can’t just stop. I thought I was starting to feel some give.”

“I know,” Spock said grimly. He stood very, very straight. He looked out over the marsh, towards the shadowed figure that was a little boy who had called out to him for help. No matter what happened here in the next few minutes, Spock thought that he would hear the sound of that trusting voice forever. “But we are injuring his body greatly with the strain of the rope, possibly mortally. His skin has undoubtedly been cut open by the vine, the corrosive now has access to his internal structures. We could literally cut him in two if we continue. It will do no good to bring a body back to his mother. We must take the time to find another way.” He clenched his fists in desperation, perhaps in despair. Otherwise, he stood as eternally still as a rock.

Kirk took in a deep breath. Without thinking he shifted his weight onto his injured ankle, then hurriedly shifted back again. “Okay. I see what you mean. We don’t have a choice. One of us has got to go in after him, pull him up. We have strength he doesn’t to resist the quicksand.”

“I will go in,” Spock said quickly. He was already looping the vine around himself and moving forward as he spoke.

“No.” Kirk stopped him with an arm on his shoulder. “I could never pull you out if you get stuck. My ankle’s sprained; I could never get enough purchase. You let me go, and you pull us out.”

Spock shook his head decisively, a quick flurry of movement that was utterly uncharacteristic and revealed his inner turmoil. “I will not get stuck. My strength will be best used in resisting the quicksand and releasing the boy from it. And the mud is corrosive. You have seen what it has done to Jamomi. It is well known that Vulcan skin tissue is tougher than human.”

“That’s illogical and you know it,” Kirk argued. “I’d much rather bet my life and Jamomi’s on your strength.” He took a quick step forward and looked intently at his lover. Why couldn’t Spock see the logic of the situation?

Spock returned the gaze and grasped Kirk’s shoulders. “Jim,” he rasped. “Jim..., you do not need to do this for the boy. I am the one.... I need to....”

Kirk lifted one hand to touch his lover’s grime-streaked cheek. Suddenly he did understand. Logic had very little to do with all the emotions flashing across the austere features: stark determination, boundless love, affection, and a fierce protectiveness, for him and for Jamomi, that made Kirk shiver. “I don’t want to do this for him,” he said softly. “I want to do it for you. And for me. It would kill me to see you die in this swamp. I want to love you for a long, long time.”

The velvet brown eyes stared into his for what seemed like endless moments.

“This is something I must do,” Spock whispered. “Do you not see?” Visions of Amanda swam before him, mixed with Jamomi’s pinched, white features. He had not been able to help his mother, not even when she was safe in Sarek’s arms and all she had asked of him was acceptance, a touch upon the hand. But here, in this swamp, he would erase the look of anguish that he had seen on Amanda’s face, that he had seen duplicated on Dlana’s. And he would give his own heart joy because Jamomi would live. His heart understood joy now.

“I will not die,” Spock promised. “It is you who have given me life.” He reached up to capture the hand against his cheek and pressed it fiercely against his face. “We will have many years together.”

“Make sure of it, Mister,” Kirk choked. The grisly vision of Spock sinking, sinking down into the mud assailed him.

He convulsively grabbed at a thin shoulder in an attempt to banish the thought. He took Spock’s lips in a bruising, lightning-quick kiss. At the same time long fingers brushed against his temple, and Kirk felt the whisper-touch of his lover’s mind against his own. Each of them was attempting to affirm life and love in his own way.

Then he turned Spock ruthlessly, tugged to make sure the vine was securely about his body, and shoved him forward into the mud, all in jerky, decisive movements. “Go,” Kirk said harshly. “Go. Hurry.”

Spock slid through the first few meters of water with only minimal resistance from the mud at the bottom of the marsh. The water inched up to his knees, then his thighs, and stayed there as he made his steady way out to the still figure of the boy.

He brushed aside the scum on the surface. He took deep, sure breaths, despite the stench that filled his nostrils, gathering his mental and physical forces in the Vulcan way he had been taught by Sarek as a child. The tingle that was working its way up his legs he ignored, except to be grateful that it was his and not his lover’s body that the corrosive force was attacking.

Only six meters to go, and his boots began to sink into the ooze at the bottom; the water crept up to his waist. But he still had purchase, this substance was not quicksand, despite the effort that it took to pull each foot up for the next step.

Three meters now. The sun was very low in the sky, and shadows filled the swamp. A leaf floated down from one of the overhanging trees, an alien, triple-lobed, yellow-streaked leaf that came to rest, floating, on the mud right next to Jamomi. The boy’s head was canted over on one shoulder, his slack hands still clutched the vine, his lifeline. His little pale face that had so suddenly become important to Spock was still drawn with the pain of his last few conscious moments.

Spock took another sliding step from a patch of sunlight to the shade, and as his eyes adjusted and his perspective changed he finally attained a clear view of the muck that had trapped Jamomi.

He looked at the thick brown soup that surrounded the boy, then at the totally different consistency of the layers of water over mud through which he was walking, and then at the clear line of demarcation between the two just centimeters before him. Spock stopped dead in his tracks.

“What’s wrong?” Kirk immediately called from where he was already in water to his knees. His hands clutched the vine in imitation of the boy’s helpless form.

“I am unharmed,” Spock reassured over his shoulder. Their words echoed strangely in the quiet stillness all about them. With the water, the overhanging trees, the bushes that grew along the edge of the muck, there was a closed-in feeling to the bog, as if they were in the chapel at Starfleet Academy. Spock’s racing mind supplied another image, drawn from the interment rituals of a hundred planets he had visited. Or a crypt. Their activity had chased all the animals and birds away, so that there was little sound except their voices and a strange whirling noise that Spock’s preoccupied brain didn’t allow him to identify.

“I can see where the water changes to quicksand,” Spock informed his captain, his voice as dispassionate and calm as on any planetary survey, as if his skin were not tingling with corrosive and a child’s life did not depend on his hands alone. “I believe the most effective procedure would be to float the rest of the way.”

“Float?” Kirk questioned from behind him. Spock felt a little tug against his waist as his lover gathered in the slack. “Do you think the quicksand will support your weight?”

“I believe so.” Spock pulled on the loose length of vine that stretched from him to the boy, and looped it once, twice, over his shoulder, then under his arm, trying to provide as secure a hold for Kirk to pull on as possible. Assuming, of course, that the vine held. He pushed that thought aside as an errant and unproductive distraction. Sarek had said it. It was illogical to speculate.

Then he took a deep breath and launched himself towards the boy.

His estimate had been correct; although pushing his way through was difficult, the mud held up the weight of his body as long as it was spread out upon the surface. Spock did not want to think of what would happen when he was forced to change position.

He reached out with one hand towards the child. One part of his brain noticed that his fingers were trembling. Then he touched Jamomi’s face and felt the breath of life stir against him.

Profound relief swept through him as he relinquished the fear that had accompanied him through the marsh. “He is alive,” Spock called, knowing that Kirk cared too.

Spock kicked again with his legs, moving closer as he tried to get behind the boy so that he could push and Kirk could pull at the same time. As he looped the rest of the vine around the boy’s body, the green shirt Jamomi had worn for the Andoluse came off in his hand, little shreds of it falling into the muck. With a choking feeling that went straight from his throat into his soul, Spock saw that shreds of skin were intermingled with the green.

Spock swallowed hard, fighting the bile that threatened as he moved to see Jamomi’s back. The rope had cut cruelly into the tender skin and was now embedded within the flesh. Raw tissue gaped open; nerve endings and tendons were clearly exposed to Spock’s sight. There were little bubbles of gas coming up from the ghastly wound as the insidious destructive force of the mud ate away at life.

He had been right. They would have killed him if they had kept pulling. They would have torn the slender body in two.

Spock did not allow the sickening sight to impede his efforts. It was difficult to keep his body flat upon the muck and still maneuver the vine so that the boy was securely tied to him. Inevitably he felt the insistent pull of the quicksand as his feet sank lower and lower.

Spock clutched Jamomi’s slender body against his chest and kicked up strongly, then pulled his legs up under him in a crouch. He sank down almost up to his neck, but at least his legs were temporarily free.

Immediately he felt pressure from the vine wrapped around them, knew that Kirk had been watching his every move and was trying to pull them in. Spock hitched his body forward, still trying to keep his legs folded under him, and pushed against the still form in front of him.

Once, twice, three times he pushed. He felt Jamomi’s body move, knew that with a little more effort he would be able to pull it out. But with each movement that Spock made he himself slipped deeper and deeper into the quicksand. He did not have enough time or enough strength after all.

A curious calm settled over him even as his body automatically fought against the insistent pull. He looked over the sandy head of the boy towards the other spot of gold in his life. Kirk was heaving on the rope desperately, his face sweat-streaked. He had advanced so that he was thigh-deep in the murky water, and Spock could see that he was braced against the bottom without regard to his injured ankle as he exerted all his strength.

Spock realized that he had miscalculated. Vulcan strength and human strength would not be enough to save them.

“Spock!” Kirk called out frantically.

Spock had heard that note of controlled desperation in his captain’s voice before. Once on Capella as they fought among the rocks. Another time as Spock hung over a precipice, about to fall to his death.

Spock looked straight into the fear-widened eyes of his lover and a wholly unVulcan, desperate resolution swept through him, energizing his limbs and fingers. He would not let it end this way! He had not struggled to find love and understanding only to let them slip away so soon. There was still so much to do, so much of Kirk and life that he wanted to know. They deserved better. After a lifetime of denial and unhappiness, he deserved better!

He clutched Jamomi more tightly to him, and kicked again. Something gave as the boy’s body popped up within the mud, and Spock knew a fierce, triumphant joy, a variant on the emotion Kirk had revealed to him but no less genuine. Frantically, he reached down for the child’s legs and tried to push them up against the stubborn resistance of the muck. If he could angle Jamomi so that he was almost floating on the mud, as Spock had been, then there was a chance....

But his joy quickly faded as each move he made drove Spock deeper and deeper. He could feel unyielding fingers wrap around his boots as he struggled to pull his feet up under him. The rope about both him and Jamomi jerked as Kirk continued to pull in desperate hope.

But it was not enough. They could not do it, and it was obvious. The mud was up to his chin. He would sink beneath the surface soon. Spock looked again towards the man he loved, seeing the shadowy figures of others behind Kirk, Sarek, Amanda.... The two of them just weren’t enough....

“What the hell?” McCoy’s loud tones crashed into the deadly silence of the clearing as he thrashed his way through the screen of bushes.

“Bones!” Kirk cried in relief. He’d never been so happy to see one puffing, red-faced physician disobeying his orders before. “Help me pull! How the hell did you get here?”

McCoy’s hands were instantly on the vine. “Knew you’d need help. Got one of Dlana’s sister-wives to pilot me here and I jumped. I know how to do that, you know, and read a tricorder, too.”

McCoy dug his feet into the mud and heaved in time with Kirk, but moments later he shook his head even as he pulled. “This won’t work. You’ve got to throw them a branch or underbrush to shove under them, buoy them up.”

“I know, I know,” Kirk panted. “I should be the one in there. We did this all wrong from the beginning. And I was afraid to let go; I thought they’d sink.”

“Well, then, you stay where you are. I’ll do it.” Instantly he was scrambling around, yanking up plants with woody stalks, breaking off half-dead limbs from the overhanging trees.

“Hold on, Spock,” McCoy yelled as bent double and tugged on a recalcitrant bush, “we’ll get you out. Hold onto that boy.”

Spock had his hands pressed against the small of Jamomi’s back, pushing his body up towards the surface of the mud and keeping the little face well away from its suffocation. His own chin was already covered. “I am endeavoring to do so, Doctor.” The movement of his mouth made a soft sucking sound in the muck. “He will require your services.”

“And you’ll be lucky if you don’t too, you damn fool Vulcan.”

As he began the familiar refrain, McCoy didn’t stop an instant in his wild hunt for underbrush, but Kirk called, “Bones, don’t talk! Just get the stuff out there. He’s sinking!” There was an unmistakable note of desperation in Kirk’s voice.

McCoy grunted in acknowledgement. The first set of limbs and branches he threw landed far short of the mark. “Damnit,” he muttered, and waded further out. “Here,” he called, and tried again.

The next branch landed with a plop! not half a meter in front of Spock’s face. He cautiously extricated one hand from under the child, reached for the precious support, and as quickly as he could pulled it under Jamomi’s limp form.

Kirk watched anxiously as McCoy spent long minutes denuding the immediate area of small plants, limbs and debris. His hair was plastered to his head, sweat dripped straight down into his eyes and his ankle hurt like hell. But he kept a steady grip on the rough vine in his hands, afraid that any slackening on his part would cause Spock, the delight of his life, to disappear forever.

Finally the first officer called out, “That may be sufficient.”

It took both sets of hands. Blood was oozing from rough cuts in Kirk’s palms, and McCoy was gasping as if he could not possibly get enough air, but finally Kirk felt the heavy burden at the other end of the line give. Then it took only seconds before his lover and the boy who was a little piece of his lover’s heart were free.

Spock was on his knees unwrapping the vine from around the still body as soon as they all staggered out of the water. He saw with relief that the boy was breathing regularly, his pulse was strong, and the water in the marsh had washed most of the corrosive mud from his body. Nevertheless, Spock said anxiously, “Doctor McCoy, would you examine Jamomi?”

Uncharacteristically, the caring physician was sitting on the mud with his feet still ankle-deep in the water. He stood, swaying from fatigue for a moment before he slowly walked over to the boy.

“You are damn lucky, young man,” he addressed Jamomi as if he were conscious. Caring hands sprayed antiseptic, antibiotics, and then a temporary field bandage on the awful wound on the child’s back.

McCoy sat back on his heels. “There,” he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead on his forearm, “that should hold him until we get him back to a hospital. He’ll live.”

Kirk turned from where he had been talking into his communicator. “Raton and Tripid have both turned back for the aircars. They’ve found another landing spot a lot closer to us. We should hear them when they land again and we’ll be able to carry Jamomi there.”

A strange look crossed McCoy’s face as he sat on the marsh’s bank next to his patient. “Good,” he gasped, and his face turned from red to ashen grey in just seconds. “I think I need a... lift. Jim...” his hands crossed over his chest, his fingers curled into talons. “Spock. I think... there’s something wrong.” He toppled over onto his back.

Kirk knelt beside him, hands hovering in the air, ready for action but not knowing what to do. “Bones,” he said helplessly. “What’s the matter?”

Spock was on the other side of the stricken physician, leaning over and frowning down at the paleness. His long fingers undid the placket at the top of the physician’s warm weather uniform tunic.

McCoy closed his eyes and drew in a long rasping breath. His fingers uncurled and plucked at the center of his heaving chest. “Pain. I should... have known. All the... symptoms....”

Kirk looked about wildly, then lunged across McCoy to grab the medical kit still open next to Jamomi. He fumbled for a hypo.

“Suverin,” the physician gasped, and Kirk watched his friend’s face as the medicine hissed in. The pain-tensed features softened.

Pale blue eyes opened and looked up, first at Kirk, then at Spock. Bloodless lips moved to speak.

“I got here just in time, didn’t I, Spock?” McCoy’s voice was whisper-thin. Both Kirk and Spock leaned in closer to hear.

Spock’s hand gripped the thin shoulder. “Indeed, you did, Doctor.”

McCoy coughed, then restlessly moved his booted feet against the ground. He raised his head and looked down the length of his body. “I’m... retaining fluid. There’s got to be a heart problem. How could... I have been so dumb... miss the symptoms....” His strength fled, his voice trailed off, and his head flopped back into Kirk’s caring palm.

Kirk’s other hand groped for the physician’s trembling fingers. “We’ll get you back to the ship, Bones. She’ll be here in a few hours. You’ll be fine.”

McCoy managed to arch a sardonic eyebrow. “Reassurance, Captain?” A huge breath. “I thought that... was my line.”

Kirk smiled down at him, a thin wavery smile that held pain and uncertainty. “Sometimes I get to do your job too, Bones.”

A ghost of a grin flitted across McCoy’s features. He coughed again. “And sometimes I get to... do yours, like saving... this irreplaceable Vulcan.” His gaze shifted to Spock. “You said I couldn’t come with you,” he whispered. They could barely hear him. “... that I’d be a burden. But I just had this... stupid feeling....” A paroxysm of coughing possessed him then, and both men supported his shoulders as he curled up in the air.

When the spasm passed they laid him back on the ground again. He gasped for air, drawing it into his lungs with huge, ragged breaths that sounded like death’s own rattle. Worriedly Kirk tried to look at Spock, but the first officer’s complete attention was focused on the struggling form between them.

Finally McCoy seemed to have enough air to speak. With obvious effort he reached up and clutched Spock’s arm. His voice, weak as it was, was deadly serious. “I was afraid of what would happen to you... if Jamomi died, Spock. If he doesn’t make it, it’s not your fault. You know that, don’t you?”

Long fingers rested on the physician’s furrowed brow; the deep voice vibrated with compassion. Affection? “Because of you, Doctor, he will not die.”

Pale eyes stared up at brown ones. McCoy shook the arm in his grasp, and another smile curved the thin lips. “Neither will you, Spock, neither will you.” Slowly, his eyes closed. “And I’m never going to let you forget it, either.”

Kirk gazed down at the suddenly slack face of his friend, and for a heart-stopping moment he thought McCoy had died. But then McCoy took another shuddering breath, and Kirk slumped in relief.

Spock fumbled for a pulse. He nodded, then finally met his captain’s eyes just as the drone of two aircars landing became audible.

“We can’t wait any longer,” Kirk decided. “We’ll carry them and meet Raton and Tripid halfway.” He reached to maneuver his arm around McCoy.

“No, Jim,” Spock said decisively. “With your injured ankle it is only logical that you carry the lighter weight. You take Jamomi. Be careful of his back. I....” He looked down at the well-known features of his eternal antagonist, then lifted him as gently as a mother carrying her newborn child. “I will take McCoy.”  
   
CHAPTER FIVE

He’d never noticed before how loud the air recycling system in Sickbay was. He couldn’t remember ever hearing it when he was concentrating on a patient’s pain, or fixing Jim up from another one of his landing party scrapes. But now the distinct hum of the machinery pushing oxygen through the _Enterprise_ was a constant background noise. And it was beginning to get really annoying. Not to mention the fact that the air wasn’t cooling properly. It was almost as hot as it had been down on that blasted planet. Didn’t any of the medical staff know patients were supposed to be comfortable?

McCoy tugged at the collar of the ridiculous Sickbay gown they’d insisted he wear, then shrugged and gave it up. So what if he felt hot and uncomfortable? He didn’t really have the energy to do anything about it anyway.

McCoy stared across the room at the plain gray doors of the drug cabinet. There was hardly anything else to look at around here, and he’d memorized every angle of the case, the wall, even the shadow thrown by the surgical lamp he’d placed on top six months ago.

Now his eyes followed Nurse Bronson as she walked over to open the cabinet. Before these last two excruciatingly boring days while M’Benga waited for his condition to stabilize, he’d never noticed how she always sniffed as she affixed the magnetic dialer to the lock, and rubbed her nose right before she reached in to retrieve whatever drug she needed. But he’d seen and heard her do it, six, no seven times since he’d been attached to this damned diagnostic bed. McCoy hunched his left shoulder against the hard pillow. Irritating. She was getting to be really irritating.

Bronson brought a tray of vials and instruments over to the table set up by his bedside, smiled at him brightly, then briskly walked away. Good, he thought sourly, turning his head in the opposite direction. I don’t need conversation right now anyway. Won’t be able to talk in a little while, so why bother now?

The sound of M’Benga’s footsteps intruded into McCoy’s self-pity. He waited until their steady thump thump had stopped at his bedside, then turned and looked into the man’s handsome face.

“Come to get your revenge for all the night shifts you have to pull, Paul?” McCoy asked sourly.

But M’Benga was strictly professional. “Hold out your arm, please, Doctor.”

McCoy grimaced but did as he was told. M’Benga’s mouth quirked, then he pushed up the sleeve of the gown and applied the instrument in his hand.

The soft hiss of the hypo against McCoy’s arm was so familiar, but the tingling sensation of the anesthetic being forced through his skin was not. He leaned back against the pillow and swallowed hard. This was ridiculous. He was a doctor. He’d operated on more people, more types of beings than he could remember. It was ridiculous to feel the tingle of fear tickling at the back of his throat. What kind of an example was he to his patients?

Damn heart valves anyway. And damn this unexpected complication from xenopolycythemia, fluid retention that had swollen his feet and made it difficult to breathe, damn the pain in his chest that had made him collapse on Shercata.

Lord knew he’d fought it. He’d concentrated solely on the vine in his hand, on the two mud-covered figures struggling to free themselves from certain death. He’d been able to totally sublimate the weakness in his limbs and the insistent pounding of his heart. Until at last he’d seen Spock safe and sound on dry land. Then, to his utter shame, he’d fallen back to the ground. He had a hazy recollection of being carried in strong Vulcan arms through the forest twilight, of the trip in the back seat of the aircar with Spock, while Tripid, the woman who’d piloted the aircar that brought him to the forest, deftly brought them back to the beach. McCoy couldn’t help squirming at the memory. He hated feeling so helpless. After the harsh words between them, what must Spock have thought of him?

M’Benga glanced down at him. “Feeling drowsy yet?”

“No,” McCoy growled. “Another ten minutes and you know it, Paul.” He detected movement from the doorway and raised his voice. “And I don’t feel like visitors. Can’t a man get any peace around here, even when he’s gonna have his chest opened up? Oh, jeez,” he groaned when Kirk walked into the room, “what is this, the federation transporter station in ‘frisco?” He squeezed his eyes shut, then popped them open just a moment later.

Kirk limped up to his bed. “Just wanted to wish you pleasant dreams, Bones,” he said lightly.

“Yeah, well,” McCoy groused, “I don’t know why you’re walking on that ankle so much. I’ve seen the medical report, you know, I’m still CMO around here. You need to sit down. Like on the bridge. Don’t you have something you can do sitting down up there?”

“A little,” Kirk smiled. “But I thought the foot needed exercise so I took a walk. Since I was in the vicinity I thought I’d drop in.”

“Well, bad timing. Don’t you know that in Sickbay we actually have work to do?” He couldn’t possibly tell Jim that he was glad to see the captain.

“Sure, Bones,” Kirk soothed. He placed one hand on the sheet that covered his friend and fought to smother another smile. “But if you can visit me on the bridge every once in a while, why can’t I visit Sickbay?”

“Yeah, well, that’s different,” McCoy said, his eyes sliding to one side. Then his gaze returned abruptly to Kirk. “I don’t suppose that our pointy-eared first officer is around too. He sure spent a lot of time here while you and Jamomi were patched up.”

Kirk couldn’t help but hear the injured tone in the physician’s voice. “That was while you were here, too, Bones,” he said gently, wanting to defend his lover. “But you were sleeping a lot of the time. To answer your question, he beamed down with Jamomi a while ago. We’ll be warping out tomorrow, and you know it was time for Jamomi to be transferred to Binian doctors.”

McCoy hitched a shoulder. “Figures. I think Spock’s fixated on the boy, I don’t know why....”

As if on cue Spock strode briskly in through the Sickbay door. He came to stand next to Kirk, his hands tucked neatly behind his back.

“Oh,” McCoy said, and plucked nervously at the sheet. “Hi, Spock.”

“Good evening, Doctor McCoy. Captain. Doctor M’Benga.” Spock nodded formally to each in turn. Then he looked down at McCoy and said gravely, “I wished to see you before your heart valve surgery. When I attempted to visit you earlier yesterday and this morning you were sleeping and communication was impossible. I am pleased that I arrived before the operation.”

McCoy grimaced, then blinked. He looked up in surprise at the Vulcan. “You did? You are?”

“Yes.” Brown eyes rested gently on blue. “I wanted to wish you... luck.”

McCoy blinked again in confusion. Did Spock remember their words to one another outside the hanger deck that time, more than a year ago? How the first officer had walked towards almost certain death within the giant amoeba, asked McCoy to “wish me luck?,” and how McCoy had stubbornly refused?

Of course he did, a Vulcan didn’t forget things. Especially not cutting, inexcusable words and actions from someone who was a friend. Sort of. Of all the conversations he’d ever had with Spock, that was one McCoy regretted, really, really regretted. He should have said it. He’d always wished he had said “good luck.”

And now here was Spock, deliberately saying it to him. Puzzled to his toes, McCoy studied the grave face before him, looking for signs of forced gratitude because of the rescue. But Spock seemed as normal, as precise and serious as he usually did. Kirk was looking at him, too, with a wondering expression. The incident outside the hanger deck seemed like it had happened a long, long time ago. They’d come a long ways since then, he and Spock and Kirk. Hadn’t they?

The silence was getting uncomfortable. He had to say something, but words didn’t seem to want to come out. McCoy cleared his throat noisily. “Uh... thanks, Spock.”

“Gratitude is unnecessary,” Spock said serenely, addressing the diagnostic panel over McCoy’s head. “I wish you well. It is necessary, for me, that you understand that sentiment.” He looked again at the flabbergasted physician. The deep voice seemed to drop another octave into affectionate tones. “Do you?”

McCoy swallowed hard and forced the prickling behind his eyelids away. He stared down at his clenched fingers. “I... guess I do.”

“Then I am satisfied. Misunderstandings and disagreements are a condition of sentience, I believe, but communication is possible nevertheless.”

The first officer turned as if to leave, but McCoy stopped him, “Spock.” The name came out like a croak.

Spock returned to the bedside, one eyebrow arched. “Yes, Doctor?”

Why was it always so hard to talk plainly to this incredibly intelligent, compassionate being? “I’m glad we communicate. It means....”

McCoy took a deep breath. Oh, hell. He just couldn’t. Couldn’t come out and say something slobbery and disgustingly sentimental, something like “I’m glad we’re friends,” or “I was never so relieved in my life as when we dragged you out of the quicksand.” He couldn’t. It would change everything. It wouldn’t be life on the _Enterprise_ if he and Spock admitted they understood each other out loud. Besides, it was so damn much fun getting in under that Vulcan hide.

He looked wickedly up at the calm features. “It means I’ll be able to keep rubbing it in how one old, worn-out doctor who was too much of a burden to take along saved your life.”

The other brow flew up to join the first. “Indeed, Doctor, may I point out....”

McCoy yawned in his face.

Kirk glanced over at M’Benga, who had been an impassive witness to the exchange between first officer and CMO. “Time for us to go?” he questioned.

M’Benga nodded. “I would say so, sir.” Then with a smirk as he looked down at the blinking McCoy, “Three minutes, Leonard, not ten. I gave you the new compound from Scotia.”

McCoy didn’t have the energy to protest, he was having enough trouble just keeping the room in focus. But he did notice when Kirk squeezed his arm and turned to leave.

“Jim?” he called out weakly.

Kirk went back to the bed. “Yes, Bones?” he asked gently.

McCoy tried to swallow, but his mouth seemed filled with cotton. “I’ll be all right,” he said thickly. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Kirk reassured. “You’re in the best of hands.” He glanced up at M’Benga, then down at McCoy again. But the CMO’s eyes were already closed.

They walked well away from the bed before Kirk swung around to ask tensely, “How long is this operation going to take?”

“Not too long,” M’Benga reassured. “One hour, maybe two. It depends on the extent of the damage to the heart valves. Nobody’s ever been cured of xenopolycythemia before, so we don’t know how far the weakening went. We’ll have to stop his heart, put him on a heart-lung machine while we implant the new valves, then close him up. I’ll let you know as soon as the procedure is concluded, Captain.”

Kirk looked around at the spartan walls. “I thought that we could wait here. I mean, just in ca....”

“That really won’t be necessary, Captain,” M’Benga quietly insisted. “I promise I’ll call you right away. Don’t worry. This is a serious operation, yes, but I don’t expect any problems. Leonard will be up and around in ten days.” He walked back to where Nurse Bronson stood next to the still form on the bed.

Kirk looked at his first officer. “Well, that told us. I have the distinct feeling we’re in the way here. I’m logged off shift. Are you?”

“Yes,” Spock said decisively, and Kirk thought, with some relief as well. “I would like to invite you to my quarters at this time. Will you come?”

Puzzled, Kirk nodded. Why the formal invitation? “Of course.”

Gratitude flashed into the brown eyes, then disappeared in the mask of Vulcan stoicism. A year ago Kirk would have interpreted the pose as simply one of control; now he also saw the barely suppressed excitement, and correctly translated the tightly folded lips as his lover’s determination not to say anything more. Spock walked out the door and Kirk willingly limped after him.

It took them a while to make their way to officers’ quarters on deck five. The corridors were busy with between-shift traffic, and Spock accommodated his usually brisk stride to Kirk’s hobble. They walked in silence, and Kirk wondered what they were walking to.

As they had anxiously waited in a Binian hospital for the return of the _Enterprise_ and the superior technology of her medical facilities, Kirk had divided his worries between his two friends. Would McCoy live? And how would Spock reconcile their rescue of Jamomi with Binian, and Vulcan, values?

He couldn’t forget the emotional intensity in Spock’s voice as he had pleaded with Dlana to allow them to go after her son. Kirk didn’t fool himself. Without Spock’s words added to his own, the boy would have died alone in the bintorrin. He still did not know what had enabled Spock to speak the way he had. Back on the beach on Shercata, Spock had said that he had much to consider. Kirk still had no idea what had been going through his lover’s mind then, but he was intensely curious to find out.

There was another image that Kirk could not forget, was unsure that he wanted to. All the emotion that had been in Spock’s voice had been displayed even more obviously on his face as he picked up McCoy’s limp body from the forest floor and carried him through the verdant twilight. Kirk might have wondered before how Spock felt about McCoy after the turbulence of their argument; he didn’t any more.

He glanced over at the first officer. Something had changed, that much was obvious. What little time they’d spent together the past forty-eight hours had been all business, and Spock had been his usual, supremely competent self, but still the difference was there. Spock seemed... Kirk cast about for the proper word in his mind. Serene. As if an inner stillness had settled over the acrimony, the angry denials, the anguished uncertainties that had all surfaced on the planet. The stillness smoothed the contours of his lover’s soul, and Kirk knew that Spock had somehow found some inner peace.

Why else the utterly atypical declaration in Sickbay from the typically restrained Vulcan? Spock had as much as declared open affection for McCoy, something Kirk had never heard before, and which McCoy, the flamboyant, determinedly emotional human had been unable to match.

That wasn’t the only thing. During the last two days Spock had made no secret of his affection and concern for the little boy who’d beamed up with them to Sickbay, had made it obvious for any crew member to see. He’d hovered over Jamomi while M’Benga treated him, visited him while off-duty, openly called to check on his condition from the bridge, even asked other members of the bridge crew to spend some time occupying the restless child.

And while he was in sickbay, Kirk had overheard a touching conversation between Spock and the boy, as all Jamomi’s shame over failing the Andaluse came pouring out. Kirk had listened in wonder as his lover’s deep voice softened in an attempt to help the child cope with his distress. The proudly logical being had not turned away from confused, almost-incoherent emotions, but instead struggled to give comfort.

The two officers entered a crowded turbolift and Kirk resisted the temptation to lean against the wall. His ankle had been laser sutured, he’d already had three ultrasound treatments, and still it throbbed.

Spock looked sternly over the head of Ensign Shinswani to catch his captain’s eye. Kirk smiled at him sweetly, fully aware that Spock sensed his discomfort and disapproved of his mobility as much as McCoy had. Well, he’d sit down soon in the warmth of his Vulcan’s cabin.

When they walked through Spock’s door, a blast of hot, not warm air, heavily flavored with incense, almost caused Kirk to stagger. He paused just within the doorway to catch his breath. It wasn’t hard to place the eerie feeling of recognition that immediately settled into the pit of his stomach. Spock’s quarters were exactly, unexpectedly, as hot as Vulcan.

The lighting was Vulcan’s too. A red tint covered everything: the ancient, lethal weapons that decorated the walls, a small firepot glowing where it had been placed on the floor in the center of the office area, even the desk and chairs that had been pushed away to the sides. The light echoed Vulcan’s primary sun, Eridani.

Spock moved forward. Wordlessly he indicated a large pillow to one side of the miniature idlomputt.

Kirk sat down and carefully arranged his legs in a cross-legged position that put the least strain on his ankle. He looked at the three red cloth-covered mounds at the points of a perfect equilateral triangle, with the firepot at its center. The cloths were lumpy with the contours of whatever small objects were under them.

Kirk looked up, questioning, but he did not want to be the one to break the silence.

Spock sank to his knees on the hard floor, then sat back on his heels and placed the palms of his hands upon the top of his thighs, in a position that looked precise and studied. Ritualistic. The fire of Vulcan glowed redly between them. Unaware that he did, Kirk leaned forward.

“You have heard me say in the past that gratitude is unnecessary,” Spock began, his voice deep and resonant, sure. He kept his gaze upon the glowing embers. “I have implied that thanks are illogical, and not a part of the Vulcan way. This is not entirely correct. On my planet, there is a ceremony, the Ilk’nanash, which is designed to express the emotion of gratitude when it is great and cannot be contained. My ancestors who attempted to mold themselves to the way of Surak found various logical means to express emotion when it was necessary. This ceremony is ancient.”

Spock gestured at the objects that lay between them, his eyes still downcast. “What you see here are the tools of the Ilk’nanash. My great-grandfather Sokar participated in this ceremony when T’Jul, his bondmate, was rescued in the desert from certain death by Shen. He touched Shen’s mind, and overlaid upon his perceptions of the event Sokar’s own emotions, so that they were shared between two. Understood and moderated between two. Words are not necessary when the mind shares, and so the excesses of emotion are controlled.”

For the first time since they had entered the room Spock looked directly at his captain. His tone changed from impersonal recitation; his words became intimate, each one a caress. “T’hy’la, I wish to share with you. I have a need to show you my gratitude.”

Kirk was confused. His eyes narrowed. “Gratitude? Spock, I haven’t done anything to earn that.” His voice became rough with sudden memory. “I almost let you die in that swamp. I love you. You’re my first officer. As your captain and as your lover, I should never have let you go in there.”

Spock shook his head, his body gently swaying from side to side with the motion. “No. That was part of your gift to me, and we are both aware of that. But there is more. I wish to show you one of my... memories. Why gratitude sings within me.”

“Memories?” Kirk’s tension faded, and anticipation grew to take its place. “The ones that you said had begun to hurt you?”

Spock nodded. A visible swirl of incense drifted down over his shoulder. “Yes. You are responsible for the synthesis of conflicting elements within me. This is... important to me.” Strong, arrow-straight fingers extended out directly over the heat of the idlomputt, then curved in the fragranced air, inviting, seeking a mind to join. “Will you share with me, and see what is in my soul and mind?”

Time seemed to stand still. There was no sound, no movement as Kirk stared into beloved brown eyes. What was Spock really offering? The only other Vulcan ritual he had ever witnessed was the aborted pon farr. Spock’s reticence, even within the depths of their melds, his fierce repudiation of any importance to his life on Vulcan had denied Kirk access to any other experiences from that highly ritualistic world where his lover had been shaped. For the first time Spock was now offering himself to Kirk not within the bounds of their love, but within the structured confines of Vulcan and its ways.

Unknowingly imitating the young boy who had stood on the desert sands when he was only six years old, Kirk blinked his eyes, slowly, for control. He would not supply the emotion in this meld, Spock would.

Deliberately Kirk rose to his knees, never taking his eyes from the Vulcan before him. Vulcan, yes! He loved one of those fiercely logical, intelligent beings, who pursued their control and order as passionately as the rest of the universe pursued personal gain and glory.

He leaned forward until he could feel the heat of the captured flame flare upon his chin, his cheekbones. Spock imitated his actions. Their faces were only centimeters apart. Kirk’s eyes caressed the sharp angles before him, lit from below by the idlomputt so that it seemed that Spock’s entire being glowed with an inner fire. He loved this individual with the seeking mind, the gentle spirit, the enormous strength of will, the ability to learn, to give, to love. To change.

Kirk moved forward so that the tips of the seeking fingers made contact with his temple. “Always,” he whispered. “I’ll share with you always.”

A red sky began to form....

 

 

_Spock stepped out into the new dawn and looked about him. It was quite possible that this was the last time he would see the front rock garden of the home he had shared with his parents for the last seventeen years, and he wanted to be certain that he had its image firmly imprinted in his memory._

_He hefted the carrier case in his left hand. It held his lyrette; the rest of the belongings that he wished to take with him to Earth had been sent ahead to the Shikahr spaceport yesterday. Both Sarek and Amanda had been out of the house; it had not been difficult to accomplish that part of his plan in secrecy._

_Spock turned when he reached the gate that led out to the street. He looked back at the house. Sokar and his bondmate T’Jul had built it more than three hundred years ago, and their descendants had lived in it ever since. The light from Eridani rising graced the outer facade of stone, the intricate carvings about the portal._

_Spock’s throat tightened. Savagely he pushed the feeling of desolation and loss down, down, until it was crushed under his control. He did not think he would live in the house again._

_Abruptly he turned away, towards the street, towards the spaceport and Starfleet Academy. But standing not one meter away from him, in the shade of the massive gate, was the diminutive figure of his mother, Amanda._

_Mother and son stared at one another for a long time. Amanda’s dispassionate blue eyes traveled over the face of her only child, to the tunic that Spock always wore when traveling with Sarek, to the case he carried in his hand. Then her gaze returned to lock with his. Although her eyes seemed to glitter in the early morning light, Spock could not detect any trace of emotion on her face. She had learned the Vulcan lesson well._

_Spock could not tolerate the silence between them any longer. “How did you know?” His voice cracked. Although he towered above his mother now that he had achieved most of his adult height, he suddenly felt very small._

_Amanda spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “How could I not?” she asked reasonably. Her voice sounded so much steadier than his own. “I know you well, Spock. I knew that your unfortunate discussion with Sarek had not erased your desire to leave.”_

_He turned back to the house. “Yes,” he said. “I need to leave.” He drew in a deep breath, tasting for the last time the early morning freshness of the sand, the breeze from the mountains, the sweet smell of the desert plants growing about them. Perversely, he took comfort and strength from the land that had nurtured him even as he left it._

_Spock turned back to his mother. “You cannot dissuade me, Mother. My mind is made up.”_

_Suddenly she bowed her head. “I know it is,” Amanda said in a low tone. “And I didn’t come out here to try to stop you.” She sniffed audibly. Spock knew that she was fighting tears, that reprehensible human manifestation of emotion. She looked up at him, lips trembling. “I came out here to say good-bye.”_

_He took a step sideways so that there was an open space between him and the street. An escape. “I do not want to say good-bye. It will only lead to an emotional display. I do not find it necessary.”_

_“But I do,” Amanda insisted. She reached towards him with an outstretched hand. “You are my son. I love you. If I could give you what you need here at home, on Vulcan, I would, and keep you with us.” Her hand fell to her side. “But I can’t. I think I knew that from the moment of your conception, when Sarek told me he sensed your life within me. Do you think... that you will be happy at Starfleet Academy, Spock?”_

_He stared over her head. “Happiness is irrelevant. I will discover other things.”_

_She nodded slowly. “Yes. Your place. I hope so.”_

_He shrugged, impatient to be gone, uncomfortable with the emotionally laden words she used. He stared down at the dirt path on which they stood. “I must go. The shuttle leaves soon.” Then, roughly, “You should not have come.”_

_“Yes, I know the shuttle schedule.” She took two steps forward, forcing him to look down into her face. “And I had to come. I had to say good-bye. I hope that one day you will come to understand why I needed to and realize that you needed to say good-bye to me, too. I hope that’s part of what you learn at the Academy.”_

_“Hope is illogical,” he said, retreating to rote._

_“But you’re not going to Earth looking for logic, are you?” she asked sadly, tilting her head. She reached out and touched his cheek with just the tips of her fingers. “Find what you are looking for. Good-bye, my son.”_

 

 

The images in the meld abruptly changed. Amanda’s unhappy face disappeared, and a dark emptiness invaded Kirk’s consciousness instead. He stood upon a flat, featureless plain that stretched towards infinity. He had seen glimpses of its sterility in their melds before, especially in the early days before he and Spock were lovers.

The air was heavy; fingers of insistent gravity dragged at his body, pressed the air out of his lungs, clamped strong fingers on his muscles and upon his spirit. Oppression permeated the stale atmosphere he was forced to breathe.

A black specter stood beside him, wrapped in a muffling cloak that covered it from chin down to toes. Even its face was covered. The features were obscured by an obviously artificial mask, grotesque in an awful carnival parody of the ideal male Vulcan. Pale, pale flesh tones were tinted with the slightest hint of green at the corners of the lips, the corners of the obsidian eyes. No touch of breath could stir the strands of perfectly proportioned hairline. No curve of humor could animate the stiff lips, or bring life to the lifeless orbs.

The black specter spoke. Even though Kirk had expected it, he couldn’t help but flinch when it was the familiar voice that came from behind the mask.

“This darkness is all I allowed myself to feel on the day I left Vulcan. I prided myself on my control, and believed that even as I sought experience of my human half I had attained a significant mastery of my own people’s way.”

There was a mirthless laugh. Kirk had never heard Spock laugh outloud like humans did, but he had witnessed his lover’s joy spill over into laughter within the private world of their melds. This barren sound had nothing of that wonderful vibrancy within it. He winced at its grating.

“I deceived myself. I clung to my false illusions and denied what I was. I denied myself my own mother, and all that she offered me.”

There was a sudden rending sound. Involuntarily, Kirk cringed, and looked up at where the darkness overhead was literally splitting in two. Between the two halves of retreating inkiness the sky was green. Not the glowing green laced with gold that accompanied his and Spock’s melds of joy and love, but a verdant, dark green. The color, on Vulcan, of blood. The color of pain.

And streaking through the ancient color with a screeching, sizzling sound that raised the hair on the back of Kirk’s neck were familiar pulsating bolts; the same purple that had pursued them when they had almost-argued in their last meld.

Kirk watched the purple with gritted teeth against its discordance. He was mesmerized by its inexorable advance. The colors flooded the sky, dripped down towards the horizon with awful swiftness, hurried across the glassy floor of the plain until they reached where the two of them stood.

The mixed pattern of green and purple light slithered over the toes of the black form. Then, with a great animal cry, not of pain but of triumph, Spock shed the cloak, ripped off the carnival mask to deliberately expose his fine and naked form to the savage forces of the sky. He reached up to the heavens with trembling arms and outstretched fingers. He embraced it all, the sorrow and the suffering, his own and his mother’s, the nightmare of all the days and nights longing for an acceptance from Vulcan that did not exist, the awful irony that prevented him from seeing the acceptance that Amanda offered. All the tightly-leashed emotions that both he and Amanda had kept in check the day he left Shikahr, the emotions Spock had denied and denied and denied.... Finally, they found a place in Spock’s soul, the place that had begun to take shape on the day that Kirk set foot on the _Enterprise_.

Spock’s extended arms shuddered, shaking as the colors of blood and passion swam up his legs, to his knees, to his thighs, up to his waist and over his heaving chest. Spock gasped, clenched his eyes shut. His face contorted in pain, and yet he did not turn away.

It was too much like a macabre, terrifying version of Spock sinking into the quicksand on Shercata, and Kirk could not stand by impotently any longer. Two quick steps and he had his arms about the rigid form, his body pressed up against his lover’s nakedness. Spock felt cold against him, and with surprise Kirk looked down to find himself clothed only with the green and purple light.

Slowly Spock’s shaking subsided. The roar and the screeching receded, little by little, until it was only a remembered tingle in their ears. All the black had faded away, conquered by color, dark and hurtful, but glowing with persistent life. The stiffened arms dropped to Kirk’s shoulders, the proud head bowed down to rest against his own, cheek to cheek.

“Spock,” Kirk said. He couldn’t control the trembling in his voice. His arms gripped the thin body hard enough to bruise. “I’d hoped your pain was over, that we had conquered it,” he whispered. “We made a gate in your wall. I never meant.... I never thought....” He stopped, utterly appalled by the emotional cataclysm that had been unleashed upon this fine and gentle, courageous man.

“Shhh, shhh,” Spock reassured, and his body moved softly against Kirk’s. “This is right. This is good, as it should be. I used our gate to enter into the part of myself that I did not know, my past. Your love has given me back that part of me. Before you, I was disconnected from an understanding of my own life experiences. You have given me the ability to feel my own pain.”

He drew a deep breath. “This is what I want you to know through the Ilk’nanash, so that you can comprehend the reason for my gratitude. I once said,” Spock’s whisper lurched with emotion, “that I had never told my mother I loved her. How could I, when I did not understand what love was?” His breath was a convulsive sob. “I do now. I also understand that the distance between my mother and myself has been far greater than the distance between Sarek and me, even over eighteen years. I drove her away as surely and as completely as I could. So many times I rejected her, turned away from the only thing she really wanted to give me. It was my way of rejecting the humanity that had given me so much pain. I knew no other way to survive.” He sighed, deeply, from his soul. “All these years, and still I did not understand why she had to say good-bye to me.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kirk quickly defended. “You found the only way you could. It must have been so hard for you, on Vulcan.”

“Yes,” Spock whispered. “I regret that time, but it seems it was necessary.”

Kirk’s lips grazed against a pale cheek. “All of it made you, the one I love. How can I hate what created you?”

Slowly Spock drew away from their embrace and held Kirk at arm’s length. “Do you understand what you have given me? For so many years, I allowed no one to truly touch my soul. Living in Starfleet, I was surrounded by all the characteristics that I had rejected in my own mother. I was repelled and attracted simultaneously, and never close enough to truly understand. You gave me the understanding of myself that I lacked, that emotions would not produce more pain, but could be the source of great happiness. Even so, in my ignorance and the fear that had propelled me from childhood, I tried to compartmentalize our love, to keep what was between us in a tight place in my soul. I could not. I even tried to combat its force with anger, so that I fought with McCoy.”

He took a deep calming breath. “I was being very illogical. It was actually a challenging exercise in logic to integrate all that you have taught me into my soul. And Dlana,” there was the ghost of a smile in his eyes now, “Dlana provided the final catalyst. She is very much like Amanda, is she not?”

Kirk looked at him, letting his smile show. Wordlessly, he nodded.

Spock went on. “I once told you that your love had given me a unity with other beings in the universe. I did not realize at that time how true those words were. You have opened up the part of me that loves; I cannot restrict it. All my life I have judged Amanda according to what she was not by comparing her with Vulcans. I have never appreciated her for what she is: my mother. My human mother. I can see her now. I thank you. You give me Jamomi and Dlana.” A true, wry grin graced his lips. “You give me McCoy. T’hy’la, I am grateful. Ilk’nanash, kah sisi pah.”

And with those ritual words the glowing world around them fell to their feet, like the colors of a child’s painting melting in the rain. Kirk came back to awareness to find Spock still kneeling before him, the little firepot between them, long fingers just sliding off the contact points. Before they could separate completely, Kirk grabbed his lover’s hands between his own, pressing. The images from the meld reverberated between them, a fading echo from their mental closeness: dawn in Shikahr, the weight of the Vulcan lyre in his hand, the roaring gusts as green and purple inched their way up his body. And then, gently, the last projection of Spock’s mind into his, the sound of Amanda’s “good-bye.”

“She loved you,” Kirk strongly affirmed.

“Yes,” Spock acknowledged. “I do not know how much of that love has survived, however. I intend to do my best to re-establish the relationship. Or at least, to build an adult, equal relationship between us.” He tilted his head to one side and his eyes narrowed. “Your ankle still pains you. Please be seated.”

Kirk sank back down on the pillow, careful of the throbbing in his foot. He looked at the three red napkins on the floor. “What are these?”

Spock maneuvered so that he was seated next to Kirk. “These represent the past, the present and the future, essential elements of the Ilk’nanash.” He removed one red cloth to reveal an ordinary message tape, then picked it up and showed it to Kirk.

“The past,” Spock intoned. “I had not wanted to respond to Amanda’s message tape which arrived four weeks ago. For more years than I wish to remember our communications have been vastly trivial, with little genuine contact. I hope that this message, ordinary as it may seem to be, is the first step in reversing that trend.” His eyes smiled as he returned the cassette to the floor. “I tell her, somewhat cryptically, that I understand her good-bye. I do not doubt that her comprehension will be swift; however, she may be... surprised.”

He removed a second cloth, revealing a holographic cube. Kirk bent closer, and saw the images of Dlana and Jamomi, smiling as they hugged one another unabashedly in Sickbay. Joy radiated from their faces; Kirk could not help but grin back at them.

He straightened, and raised an inquiring eye. “The present? Did you take this yourself?”

Spock nodded. “I wish to remember them,” he said quietly, and covered the life-like images that would travel with him through space.

“This third item,” Spock looked at Kirk hesitantly, “concerns us. Our relationship.”

The third cloth revealed a two dimensional picture in a simple gold frame. Kirk and Spock were seated across from one another at a table in what appeared to be a restaurant, a look of dawning love upon their faces.

Kirk picked it up, almost reverently. “I haven’t seen this since I gave it to you five months ago.”

Spock nodded. “At which time you said that when we wished to tell McCoy of our relationship, we should give him this picture of the two of us, and he would understand. Jim,” Spock took a deep breath, “I believe it would be appropriate to show McCoy that picture now.”

Kirk’s eyes searched his lover’s face. “You don’t have to. I’ll understand.”

“The greatest gift one can present to a friend is the truth,” Spock said. “McCoy is my friend, albeit an irritating one with whom I do not always agree. I feel as if we have been lying to him for six months. It is a state of affairs,” his eyebrow arched as he acknowledged the pun, “I would like to see corrected. Even if we are not prepared to inform others, we must inform him.” He looked at Kirk expectantly.

A slow grin spread across Kirk’s handsome face. He and Spock so often arrived at the same conclusion along totally different roads. And rocky though this road had been, still his friend and lover, the other half of his soul, had travelled along it to meet him. Ghod, he loved Spock!

Kirk opened his mouth to speak, but before words could come forth they were interrupted by the whistle of the intercom calling for the captain.

Spock smoothly unfolded his long legs and walked over to the desk pushed up against the wall. He punched the button that activated the screen. “Spock here.”

“Sickbay, Mr. Spock,” came M’Benga’s deep tones. “Is the captain with you?”

Kirk hobbled over, swallowing sudden fear as he went. How much time had passed in the meld? M’Benga’s calm expression didn’t give a clue as to whether McCoy lived or had died. “Yes, Doctor?” he asked decisively, even though his throat was dry.

“Doctor McCoy is all right, sir,” he said immediately. “There was just one heart valve damaged. I replaced that, and Leonard is doing well. He’ll be just fine, Captain.”

“Great!” Kirk didn’t try to hide his relief. “When will he be conscious? I think...” his gaze slid over to lock with Spock’s, “...I think that there’s something I need to talk with him about.”

M’Benga shook his head emphatically. “No, sir,” he said. “No ship’s business for several days. You can visit him tomorrow, Captain, but not for long. The man needs rest, lots of it. But,” his dark eyes narrowed, “there is something you can do.”

“Well?” Kirk encouraged.

The physician looked stern despite a suspicious tick at the corner of one mouth. “Stay off your feet, Captain, and go to bed early. I don’t know how Leonard would react if he woke up to find you in a sickbay bed next to him.

Kirk scowled dramatically. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

“Yes, sir,” M’Benga dutifully replied. “Sickbay out.”

Kirk looked up from the blank screen to Spock, then limped over to stand in front of him. “Yes,” he said steadily, “I would like to tell Bones that I love you very much.” He raised one hand to caress a dry cheek. “I don’t deserve your thanks, you know,” and he gestured behind them to where the miniature firepot glowed on the floor. “I’m very happy that you’ve been able to find some inner peace. But don’t thank me for loving you as the reason. I can’t help loving you. I don’t think anything could stop me.”

Spock reached out and gathered Kirk into his arms. Kirk went willingly; he leaned against the warmth of this Vulcan who shared his life, and Spock closed his eyes to appreciate the strength and support that had enabled him to learn so much about himself.

“T’hy’la,” Spock breathed. One hand came up to entangle in the gold-bronze hair as he looked deeply into Kirk’s eyes, golden in the red light of the Vulcan-dawn quarters. “Do you know that I love you as well?”

Kirk smiled at him. “Show me,” he whispered. “And I’ll show you.”

They leaned together into a kiss that lasted a long minute. It began gently, and escalated into a very physical, very sexual meeting of lips and tongues. Spock wrapped his arms around Kirk’s back, strong and possessive, supporting him, pulling the weight off the damaged leg. Then one hand moved down to emphatically squeeze around the curve of the captain’s ass.

Kirk retreated just enough to allow himself to breathe and look into his lover’s eyes. He flexed his buttocks, and the fingers upon him tightened. Spock smiled at him, in that unmistakable way that didn’t move a muscle of his face but set his eyes dancing, and pumped his hips once against the cool body in his arms. Against his own sudden arousal, Kirk felt the solid bulk of an erected Vulcan penis between them.

It was an evening for truth. “What do you want?” Kirk whispered.

Eyes glowing, Spock traced a line with one fingertip along the length of Kirk’s face, from temple down to chin, delicately touching, slowly moving so that Kirk felt warmth pass over each centimeter.

“I wish to move within your body,” Spock breathed. “I wish to bury my heat within your coolness.”

Kirk’s heart jumped. There was naked desire in his lover’s deep voice, in the open, yearning expression on the beloved face.

“Why?” he asked softly, knowing the answer in his soul before he heard it in the air.

“Because I love you,” Spock said, his voice resonating with feeling. “Because there occasionally stirs within me the need for that role. It is one part of what I am. And I wish to open myself to you, not hide from you. Because tonight,” he took a deep breath, and the smile danced in his eyes, “I want to.”

Pride filled Kirk’s heart, along with a very genuine desire to feel Vulcan heat searing within his body. He could give this most admirable being pleasure, and Spock loved him enough to share with him ecstasy and orgasm, and the hidden desires of a precious soul.

Kirk smiled back at his lover. He said softly, “Let’s make love.”

 

 

The next morning, first shift bridge crew prepared to warp out of orbit. Kirk was seated in the center chair, Spock stood at the science station, Lieutenants Sulu and Dillow manned the helm and navigation console.

Dillow turned her chair to face the captain. “Course computed and laid in, sir.”

“Very well, Lieutenant,” Kirk replied. “Mr. Sulu....”

But before he could give the order, Lieutenant Resl’t, the Andorian communications officer, interrupted him.

“Captain, clan leader Sh’shon Dlana Meriti wishes to speak with you.”

Kirk’s face showed his delighted surprise. “Put her on the screen, Lieutenant.” He swiveled his chair to face the front of the bridge.

Dlana sat in one of the low overstuffed chairs they had used during the negotiations. Jamomi stood next to her leaning on the chair’s arm, looking pale but happy and with the bulk of a bandage evident beneath his thin shirt. In her arms, Dlana held a blanket-bundled baby.

“Captain Kirk, of the starship _Enterprise_ ,” she began formally, but with a definite twinkle in her eye. “I did not want you to leave without introducing you to the newest member of our clan, born just last evening.” She held the baby up so that the bridge crew could see the child’s puckered, red face. “Our little girl, Sh’shon Delita Meriti.”

“Beautiful, Dlana, daughter of Rusenton,” Kirk enthused for them all, “just beautiful. Thank you for the introduction.”

The baby was tucked back within the curve of a loving arm. “And I thought that you would also like to know that most of my people agree with my decision to allow you to find Jamomi. I should not have expected their condemnation.” She chuckled, her amusement laced with an obvious relief. “It looks like we won’t be forced off-world after all.”

“I’m glad,” Kirk said sincerely.

The clan leader nodded. Despite the differences in the extent of their power, she and the undisputed captain of 430 individuals understood each other very well.

“And finally,” Dlana said, “Jamomi wanted one more chance to speak with Commander Spock, first officer of the _Enterprise_.”

“No, no,” her son scolded with the universal, all-knowing attitude of youth. “That’s not the right way. I learned from the commander the correct way to address him, like you told me to.” The boy faced forward squarely, settling his shoulders like an adult. His words came out in a rush. “My thanks once again to you, Spock, son of Sarek, for saving my life, and for teaching me many things. I hope to see you again some day.”

From his position at the science station, Spock took two steps forward towards the screen, his right hand raised in the Vulcan salute. “I wish you all peace and long life. May we meet again.” His hand dropped to his side, and for just a moment, his eyes flickered to meet his captain’s. Then, before the entire bridge crew and to the eternal delight of his lover, Spock shared his new truth.

“I, too, have learned much from you, Jamomi, son of Dlana, for which I convey my gratitude. For now I know that what you said was true; I am indeed Spock, son of Sarek... and son of Amanda.”

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> "Son of Sarek" first appeared in T’hy’la 14 and was reprinted in Setting Course: the Jenna Sinclair Collection, both published by Kathleen Resch. Many thanks to Kathleen for editing help.


End file.
